...The only reason we even know Rep. Swalwell’s name is because he thought, as a three-term, 30-something representative, he could pole-vault directly into the White House and so ran for president in 2019. No one in history has made that leap, but give him credit for youthful — if naive — exuberance.
In the end, his presidential campaign didn’t just fail to launch, it didn’t make it out of the hangar, lasting a
fizzling three months. But the campaign was not without some political value that Rep. Swalwell leveraged to become one of the most quoted and aggressive Trump-Russia collusion and impeachment howlers on the left. The attention was intoxicating for a newer congressman in a large state whom no one normally would know or care about...
...Swalwell’s prior experience in the world of foreign intelligence operations was limited to his role as a small-town councilman. Why then, you might logically wonder, was he assigned to the prestigious and sensitive intelligence committee? It wasn’t for his keen understanding of Russian tradecraft, that much we know. Think more along the lines of the business and philosophical interests of the China-groveling high-tech companies and socialist academic communities whose districts he straddles...
...Eric Swalwell has emerged as a useful icon of a major piece of the mosaic that makes up the complex intelligence-gathering strategy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Rep. Swalwell is just a snapshot, but now, a very public one. The PRC is actively targeting many of our politicians to ensure friendly representation of China’s aggressive interests during our democratic deliberations.
Chinese intelligence operations are raising and bundling money for ever more expensive campaigns, placing cooperators in key offices, and directing
lucrative business to family members of elected officials. They are insisting that our Big Tech companies compromise American values in exchange for access to their seductive, profitable market. They are stealing our intellectual property and then using it to compete against us. They are exploiting our generosity by sending tens of thousands of students and academics to our universities with express orders to
feed intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party. They are intently watching our reaction to a coronavirus that originated in their country, and carefully assessing its impacts on our fiscal health, traditional freedoms and national unity....
