It may be purely coincidental, but on the same day that House speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McCarthy received an intelligence briefing on Eric Swalwell's relationship with Chinese spy Fang Fang, two highly regarded conservative journalists report that an anonymous source has confirmed that he was engaged in a sexual relationship with her.

A source on Capitol Hill confirmed to @FDRLST today that Rep. Eric Swalwell had a sexual relationship with communist Chinese spy Fang Fang. The FBI finally briefed congressional leaders today on the details of Fang Fang’s interactions with lawmakers on behalf of communist China.

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 18, 2020

A source just confirmed this to me >>>>> https://t.co/Hc5BKVg9A1

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 18, 2020

I trust both Davis and Saavedra more than I trust the New York Times, but the source remains anonymous, so we can't be 100% sure.  However, given that we know from intelligence sources that the Chinese Mata Hari was using sex with two unnamed Midwestern mayors, one of them quite elderly, and given that Swalwell refuses to deny a sexual relationship, it seems highly probable that he was doing the deed with the spy.

In that case, to use Hillary Clinton's question, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

The answer is quite a lot.

Since Fang Fang was employing sex as a tool of espionage, she very likely was recording her sexual encounters, as that would provide leverage, what the Russians term kompromat.

One assumes that Ms. Fang received training in various sexual practices that could lure her targets into the most embarrassing possible situations.  Video, sound, and still photographs of her target's genitalia, or of him engaging in humiliating practices, for instance, could be most useful.  This is a family publication, so I won't go into specifics, but once softened up by sexual gratification, a target could be lured into all sorts of deviant, even repulsive, practices with questions like, "My darling, have you ever tried...?"

Who knows what sexual paraphernalia Ms. Fang carried with her to use in encounters with her chumps?  Who knows what fetishes she was trained to encourage her targets to sample?

Then there is the matter of pillow talk.  Besotted with heretofore undreamed of sexual experiences, a target might well reveal all sorts of things that could be useful.  Feelings about the size of his member, for instance.  Or recounting his previous experiences.  Fang Fang most likely was trained in using the post-coital moments to open the doors to self-revelation, anything not merely embarrassing, but possibly illegal, or of psychological hang-ups resulting from traumatic experiences.

Then there is the matter of official duties in office that her targets may have spoken about in the aftermath of sex.

What if she supplied illegal drugs?

I am certain that my imagination is more limited than that of her spymasters in China, so these possibilities only scratch the surface.

There is no way that a man so potentially compromised should sit on the House Intelligence Committee.  Swalwell's lack of background on foreign affairs alone makes his appointment to the plum committee suspicious.  And his behavior in office, flacking for the phony Russian election interference charges, served the interests of Beijing by distracting from their much more serious and extensive offensives to corrupt our elections, steal our intellectual property, and replace us as the world's principal economic and military power, magnifies the justified suspicions.

All of this makes the media blackout and tech censorship of the story all the worse.  The Chinese learned all too well from their own history with the West that compradors — powerful and rich domestic actors enriched by serving the interests of a foreign power — can serve to undermine even the most powerful nations.

We are being betrayed by our own compradors.

Photo credit: Facebook via the U.K. Daily Mail.