Former Washington Examiner Justice reporter Jerry Dunleavy revealed Sunday in a series of lengthy tweets that, per a source, senior FBI leadership meddled in and shuttered investigations into Fang Fang, the rumored ex-lover of Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) as well as Russell Lowe, a Chinese-American who had been working for Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
But most notable was something long the subject of speculation and giggles on Twitter, which was, as Dunleavy confirmed, “that there had been a sexual relationship between Swalwell & Fang.” Naturally, none of this was of interest to the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC on their flagship Sunday night and Monday morning newscasts.
In the first tweet, Dunleavy explained the new reporting “raise[s] serious concerns about how the FBI top brass may have politicized these two investigations” to the point of “essentially end[ing]” the probes, preventing law enforcement from “fully investigat[ing] CCP espionage targeting two high-profile Democrats.”
He recapped both tales for the uninitiated, noting both Fang and Lowe knew each other, “were believed to be co-optees of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) — the CCP’s intelligence & secret police agency response for foreign intelligence & counterintelligence operations worldwide” and both spoke with Chinese intelligence officials.
Turning to Fang Fang, Dunleavy dropped the bomb after referring to a 2020 story in Axios:
One thing that was actually not in the Axios story but which my source has confirmed — the FBI firmly believed based on the evidence they collected on Fang that there had been a sexual relationship between Swalwell & Fang.
He added that said official told him “the FBI had FISA surveillance up & running on Fang…and so many of her actions & communications were being intercepted & monitored.” This also drew in the CIA and the NSA.
They eventually came to believe she wasn’t “a Chinese intelligence officer herself, but rather a willing tool of Chinese intel services.”
Things grew even more serious as, according to Dunleavy, “[t]he FBI further opened a parallel public corruption case directly related to all of this and made Swalwell a subject of the case…looking into the possibilities of illegal foreign donations from the Chinese government, possible quid pro quo, and possible bribery”.
Along with Fang fundraising for Swalwell in 2014, Dunleavy said Swalwell’s “D.C. office also provided an internship for Fang’s family friend, per the source, with the FBI believing the internship was provided as a favor to Fang.”
A year later, Swalwell joined the House Intelligence Committee, leading to “the FBI’s top leadership…decid[ing] to provide Swalwell with a defensive briefing in 2015, which effectively shut down the dual investigations by the bureau.”
Dunleavy said this move was the nexus of “heated disagreement” with agents “want[ing] to keep investigating.” But, by giving Swalwell the briefing, Fang got wind of this and fled the country.
The pattern was much the same for Lowe (minus the relationship…that would have been gross) (click “expand”)
Politico & other outlets wrote about Lowe starting in 2018, but again much of the following info is new. The Feinstein staffer was being looked at by the FBI for numerous years (since at least 2008), per the source, with a case opened against Lowe by the bureau because he met with a Chinese intelligence officer in San Francisco. According to the former FBI official from the counterintelligence world, Lowe had also secretly met with Chinese intel officers in China for years[.]
(….)
The FBI investigation into Lowe moved slowly for a few years. That FBI investigation was eventually moved from being a counterintelligence case to counterespionage case, the source said, and the FBI was legitimately concerned by what Lowe was up to.
According to the source, the bureau worked on obtaining a FISA against Lowe…but the FISA never got submitted to the FISA Court, and the FBI pulled the FISA at the last minute in a very unusual move.
There was initial approval to search Lowe’s home…but that was called off when then-FBI deputy director Sean Joyce instead decided to give Feinstein a defensive briefing in the latter half of 2013.
(….)
The source said FBI agents were told by then-FBI counterespionage section chief Louis Bladel that the prevailing reason for the FBI deputy director briefing Feisntein…was that the FBI needed Feinstein’s support and needed Feinstein on their side.
(….)
Lowe left Feinstein’s office after she received her defensive briefing.
As Dunleavy noted in his fourth and final tweet on this, his source “pointed to the double standard in how FBI defensive briefings were used” with one “given to then-candidate Trump in 2016 was actually a pretextual briefing which the FBI exploited to advance its Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
In contrast, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today spent a combined 13 minutes and 58 seconds previewing Amazon’s Prime Day and competing deals from other retailers while CBS Mornings had two minutes and 23 seconds on a Barbie-themed café.
