One Spy Too Many in California Politics

Why do foreign spies target California politicians?

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) still refuses to say if he had a sexual relationship with accused Chinese Communist government spy Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, who successfully infiltrated a number of Democrat congressional campaigns in California, and even served as a fundraising bundler for Swalwell, according to reporting by Axios. She even placed an intern in his Washington, D.C. office.

Swalwell was among the loudest, most obnoxious voices in the Democrat Party accusing President Donald Trump of being compromised by Russia, which was revealed as a huge lie.

“Why did Speaker Pelosi appoint him after the FBI had warned her he had been in a dangerous relationship with a Chinese spy?” Newt Gingrich asked in Newsweek recently.

Fang also made serious inroads with Democrats Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). Gabbard and Swalwell both ran for president in the last election cycle, Townhall reported.

In 2018, it was revealed a longtime driver for California U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein was a spy, while she was the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Feinstein was one of the loudest voices for the charge that candidate and President Donald Trump was a Russian asset and puppet of Vladimir Putin, the Globe reported. As that hoax unfolded, it emerged that Feinstein employed a Communist Chinese spy as her driver for almost 20 years.

Feinstein’s Communist Chinese spy also served in her San Francisco office and even attended Chinese Consulate functions for the senator. The spy remained in place for three election cycles but Sen. Feinstein never faced high-volume charges of channeling foreign influence in American elections.

For years, international financier Richard C. Blum’s vast business portfolio has persisted as a nettlesome issue for his wife, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a vocal proponent of increased China trade, the Los Angeles Times reported twenty years ago in 2000. Richard Blum made billions investing in China.

Swalwell’s Chinese spy spent years trying to get Democrats sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party elected to Congress. So how can Swalwell sit on the Intel committee when he spent years in bed financially with Communist Chinese spies? How can Sen. Dianne Feinstein sit on the Senate Intel committee when she had a Communist Chinese spy on her staff for 20 years?

But wait! There’s more!

In 2018, immediately following the November 2016 election, California Governor Jerry Brown appointed then-U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D) to replace State Attorney General Kamala Harris, who won election to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, I reported.

Many wondered why Becerra was Brown’s choice given that Becerra served in Congress since 1993, and he and his family lived in Washington D.C.

Xavier Becerra had lingering troubles from his days in Congress. As the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak extensively reported, “Xavier Becerra ran the House Democratic Caucus, and his server was physically stolen shortly after the IG report named it as evidence in a hacking probe, three senior government officials said.”

“Members of the Awan family logged on to the Caucus server 7,000 times without authorization between October 2015 and August 2016, according to a House investigation. The logins suggested ‘the server is being used for nefarious purposes and elevated the risk that individuals could be reading and/or removed information,’ it said.”

“The Awans were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment—including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks,” former Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy reported in National Review. And none of the Awans could have qualified for a security clearance.

The unvetted Awans enjoyed unfettered access throughout the Democrat Caucus—and even had access to the accounts of members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.

Many believe Becerra departed Congress to become Jerry Brown’s appointed attorney general in California to put him in a position in which he could not be prosecuted.

In 2014, State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), was indicted on federal corruption charges, racketeering, and arms dealing, for selling rocket launchers to Muslim Separatists in the Philippines.

A billionaire Chinese real estate developer provided San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru with lavish hotel stays and a $2,070 bottle of wine. The developer is chief executive of R&F Properties, one of the world’s biggest luxury hotel owners, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Why is San Francisco called “Beijing-by-the-Bay?”

China’s significant influence in San Francisco is no secret. “While it may come as a surprise to many Californians, foreign espionage is nothing new in the golden state. California has been a hotbed for foreign intelligence collection and surveillance for over 30 years,” the Berkeley Political Review reported in 2018.

“What makes Chinese spying in California, particularly the Bay Area, so insidious is its defiance of traditional tradecraft norms. Workers on J-visas have a long history of utilizing their position within America’s best technology companies to supply the Chinese state, and subsequently its domestic industries, with insider information on American technology.”

The late San Francisco political power broker Rose Pak was an executive director with the China Overseas Exchange Association (COEA), the Epoch Times reported. A Foreign Policy Association article states, “COEA’s leadership is composed entirely of Chinese Communist Party officials representing various foreign affairs and ‘overseas propaganda’ agencies of the Chinese government.”

“Pak is long-suspected of being a key player on Beijing’s team in San Francisco.”

To people in San Francisco, Pak was known as a power broker who made significant contributions to the city, such as electing the first Chinese-American mayor in San Francisco, Ed Lee. Actually, Pak was integral in Gavin Newsom’s decision to appoint Ed Lee interim Mayor when Newsom was elected Lt. Governor in 2011. She was also close with Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown.

Rose Pak “has enjoyed friendly relations with China’s government and escorted mayoral delegations to the Far East over the years,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2007.

“Rose Pak is back. You might not know her, but every politician in San Francisco does,” ABC7 reported. “She’s been a power broker in Chinatown and at City Hall for decades. Pak’s been a behind the scenes influence in several mayoral administrations and took credit for Ed Lee’s ascension…”

In How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies, Politico reported: “As one former senior intelligence official put it: ‘San Francisco is a trailblazer—you see the changes there in foreign counterintelligence first. Trends emerge there.’ If we want to understand a world where Russia and China are ramping up their spy games against the United States, then we need to pay attention to what’s happening in San Francisco.”

Mark Eades wrote in the Epoch Times: “One might almost think that they regard San Francisco not as an American city, but as an overseas colony of the People’s Republic of China: A quaint little Beijing-by-the-Bay, with clean air, cable cars, and walk-away crab cocktails for the pleasure of corrupt Chinese Communist Party officials.”