Eric Swalwell has the distinction of being the first American congressman believed to have had a sexual affair with a Chinese spy. Maybe that explains why Nancy Pelosi assigned him to his old seat on the Home Security panel. After all, who has more knowledge about spies than someone whom a spy duped? However, Pelosi may be sending us a few other messages we just have to decode.

Briefly, in December, news broke that Eric Swalwell, a Democrat congressman from California, had been in a relationship with a woman named Fang Fang, who was almost certainly a Chinese spy. It wasn’t just any relationship. She wasn’t driving him around town as Dianne Feinstein’s chauffeur-Chinese spy had been for almost twenty years. Instead, Swalwell is said to have had a sexual relationship with Fang Fang. You know what that means, right? Pillow talk.

Swalwell’s affair with Fang Fang leads to a few possible conclusions: Swalwell is dangerously naive, Swalwell is careless, Swalwell is a traitor, or Swalwell is an unlucky but innocent man. Without further information, we don’t know which is true, but the first three possibilities might suggest that you don’t want to put Swalwell on committees involving national security.

Nancy Pelosi, though, had other ideas. The New York Post tells the story:

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell is joining the House Committee on Homeland Security one month after it was revealed he was targeted by a suspected Chinese spy.

The California lawmaker — who was revealed to have been duped by a Chinese honey-trap spy who cozied to him and other pols in a bid to infiltrate the US political system — announced his appointment back onto the sensitive post in a tweet on Friday afternoon.

“My committee memberships — along with my experience as a prosecutor and as the son and brother of law enforcement officers — will give me a unique opportunity to delve into one of America’s most serious national security threats,” Swalwell wrote.

The big question, of course, is to figure out what Nancy Pelosi was thinking with that appointment. She could, of course, know that Swalwell is just unlucky but entirely innocent. In that case, Pelosi showed humanitarian grace when she chose not to punish him for something that wasn’t his fault. But do you really think of humanitarian grace when you think of Nancy Pelosi?

Pelosi could simply be trolling everybody for the fun of it. That doesn’t sound likely either. Pelosi is all about power and there’s no room for fun there.

Perhaps, Pelosi is telling Americans that Swalwell’s history is irrelevant. China is already inside the American government and it doesn’t matter whether Swalwell is leaking like a sieve or not.

With Biden in the White House, Hunter protected from prison, and Trump, the only bulwark we had against China, sent to the hinterlands, we can give up the pretense that China is our “enemy.” China is our friend and we’d better get used to having it – and its agents and its agents’ dupes – sitting within the walls of Congress itself.

We’re entering the Twilight Zone of American politics. Pelosi’s move is yet another movement when American’s are being pushed into “the pit of man’s fears,” only without the “summit of his knowledge.” We’re hurling through a boundless space in which nothing is familiar and only the weird remains.

IMAGE: Eric Swalwell. YouTube screengrab.