Kevin McCarthy Knows A Secret About Eric Swalwell And Chinese Spy, But SHHHHH IT'S CLASSIFIED!
Sure.
GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a busy little bonkers this week!
Lying about terrorists from Yemen, Turkey, and Iran doing their best impression of four-year-old Central American kids and sneaking across the Mexican border? Check!
Sending "Dear Colleague" letters to his caucus demanding Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell be removed from the House Intelligence Committee, definitely because Eric Swalwell did SOMETHING VERY BAD WITH CHINESE SPY, and not at all because he's desperately looking for a Democratic rep to punish in order to distract from all the QANazis seeping into his caucus, one of whom, Marjorie Taylor Greene, had to be literally removed from all her committees for being such garbage?
According to McCarthy's letter, he is "deeply disturbed" by what he found out in a briefing he received with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on December 18, about Swalwell doing SOMETHING VERY BAD WITH CHINESE SPY. "I firmly believe that if any other member attended that briefing with us, he or she would reach this same conclusion," McCarthy wrote, without adding, "You know, if they were a full-of-shit Republican like meeeeeeeeeeee!"
His letter says he's not taking this lightly, you guys!
But, you know, he can't tell you what happened in the briefing, because classified. And Pelosi doesn't seem to have the same problem with whatever she heard in that briefing. But it's VERY BAD!
Let's review what Eric Swalwell has been accused of: Not much.
During the lame duck period of Trump's presidency, the part after he lost real hard and tried to pretend he hadn't, Axios came out with a big story we are almost certain Trump people leaked in order to hurt Eric Swalwell. It said he is BANGING SOOOOOOO MANY CHINESE SPIES RIGHT NOW just kidding no it didn't.
A Chinese national named Fang Fang/Christine Fang reportedly had sidled up to a bunch of US American politicians between 2011 and 2015. (Swalwell was first elected to Congress in November 2012.) She was involved with his re-election campaign in 2014, but then in 2015, Swalwell got a defensive briefing from the FBI about who this person was, and that year, she also mysteriously ghosted America and went back to China. Swalwell cut off all contact.
Separately, Fang reportedly did intercoursal spy fucking with some Midwestern mayors.
Swalwell was never and has never been accused of wrongdoing. He was never and has never been accused of giving the Chinese spy classified information. She may have been trying to gather intel from Swalwell and several other politicians, including Ro Khanna and Tulsi Gabbard, to whom she also sidled up, but this letter from McCarthy today is about ERIC SWALWELL BAD, PLEASE STAY ON THE SUBJECT OF ERIC SWALWELL BAD.
Besides, people said, Swalwell's dad and brother were still Facebook friends with the spy until all this news came out! Which proves they might have played Farmville with her at some point!
But yeah.
Kevin McCarthy didn't queen out about Chinese spies when it came out that Ivanka and Jared got defensive briefings about how Wendi Deng Murdoch, ex-wife of Rupert and BFF of Ivanka Trump, mighta been using her relationship with them to benefit the Chinese government. And Ivanka and Jared had totally normal and legally procured top secret security clearances!
Guess that wasn't an issue.
We are sure this is much worse, though. Kevin McCarthy, paragon of honesty and vector of unvarnished truth, says it's very bad. He just can't tell us why because CLASSIFIED.
Sounds legit.
By the way, Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, one of the most uproariously stupid GOP members of the House Intel Committee, went on Fox News this week yammering his little nuts off about this, claiming Swalwell is at best simply too gullible to be on the Intel Committee if he couldn't tell this Chinese spy was trying to collude him. (The GOP members also would like a briefing from FBI Director Christopher Wray on how bad Eric Swalwell really is.)
Which brings up a lot of questions about approximately NINE MILLION FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN STAFFERS and DONALD TRUMP'S CHILDREN and DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF, who must have also been very naive and gullible if they didn't know there was a literal army of Russian spies living inside each and every one of their asscaverns starting the day Trump walked down that escalator in 2015.
Bet Kevin McCarthy and his caucus will become very concerned about that any day now. Hell, it's not like it's new information to him. He told Paul Ryan and other GOP colleagues way back in 2016 he was pretty sure Putin was paying Trump.
Oh what, is that somehow not relevant right now?
Fuck off.
[Politico]
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Eric Swalwell: He Bang With Chinese Spy?
FBI cleared him of wrongdoing, not like that matters.
On Tuesday, Axios published a great big story about a Chinese spying operation in the United States. The product of a year-long investigation, it revealed that a "Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang" had gotten friendly with a whole bunch of US politicians, their campaigns, and staff in their offices, between 2011 and 2015. Among them was Congressman Eric Swalwell. Fang worked on his 2014 reelection campaign, saw him at several events, and even managed to place an intern with Swalwell's office in Washington DC.
- The report makes clear that Swalwell was not suspected of any wrongdoing, and that when the FBI gave him a "defensive briefing" on Fang's suspected espionage activities in 2015, he immediately cut off all contact with Fang. Fang abruptly left the US in mid-2015 and returned to China.
- The full report is pretty interesting reading, if you can get past Axios's bullet-point style.
- The site's punchy format isn't very well-suited to longform reporting.
- You have to wonder if maybe someone said in a meeting at some point, "Oh fuck the brand, let's just use paragraphs, for chrissake."
- If anyone did argue for more conventional formatting, they were clearly shot down.
What's at stake: God I hope that over time, this doesn't somehow become the norm for English prose writing.
The Axios article points out that US officials "do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information," and that her activities were limited to a more mundane flavor of intelligence work, getting close to up-and-coming politicians in California, particularly in the Bay Area.
- The piece notes that "Private but unclassified information about government officials — such as their habits, preferences, schedules, social networks, and even rumors about them — is a form of political intelligence. Collecting such information is a key part of what foreign intelligence agencies do."
- in addition to Swalwell, Fang had contact with other prominent politicos, mostly but not exclusively in California. She worked on Ro Khanna's unsuccessful 2014 campaign for the House, helped run a fundraiser for Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), and showed up in photos with Rep. Judy Chu and then-Rep Mike Honda, too.
- Fang initially made contact with a lot of politicians when she was enrolled as a student at "a Bay Area University," and was frequently in contact which the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, where a suspected Chinese agent was on the staff. That agent also worked to make contact with US politicians at the state and local level.
Don't forget the sexytime stuff! The sexytime stuff is semi-hilarious!
- Fang did sex things as part of her political intelligence gathering. She "engaged in sexual or romantic relationships with at least two mayors of Midwestern cities over a period of about three years, according to one U.S. intelligence official and one former elected official."
- Besides that, we're treated to these gratuitous if not particularly titillating details:
- "At a 2014 conference in Washington, an older Midwestern mayor 'from an obscure city' referred to Fang as his 'girlfriend' and insisted the relationship was genuine despite the clear age difference between Fang and himself[.]"
- "Fang also had a sexual encounter with an Ohio mayor in a car that was under electronic FBI surveillance, said one current U.S. official. When the mayor asked why Fang was interested in him, Fang told him she wanted to improve her English, the same official said."
- Urban Dictionary does not have an entry for "improve [one's] English."
Why it matters: Spy stories are always better with sex, duh.
A random digression about what Fang was up to and why:
- "The case demonstrates China's strategy of cultivating relationships that may take years or even decades to bear fruit. The Chinese Communist Party knows that today's mayors and city council members are tomorrow's governors and members of Congress."
- Ah, but are they making contact with our reality TV hosts or our random Q-Anon loonies? Aw, hell, probably.
- Personally, I find the Chinese Communist Party's complete lack of interest in me very discouraging, from a professional perspective.
- No, I'm not tired of the bit yet. Gonna see it through
- Forget that, though, because the Murdoch press wants to know whether Swalwell and the spy banged. The New York Post very excitedly pointed out that Swalwell won't say whether they banged.
- Did they bang?
- Fox News complained that Swalwell is "stonewalling" on the matter because he won't go into detail, beyond a statement that he won't talk about Fang, to "protect information that might be classified."
- Yeah, classified information on whether they banged.
- Swalwell told CNN that he's not concerned he shared any sensitive information with Fang, because he's very sure he didn't, and the Axios story said that too. But he did add that "The people who did share classified information were the people who leaked this story."
- Burn!
- A Post editorial also wondered why the FBI didn't simply do Donald Trump the courtesy of letting him know it was looking into whether his campaign was in bed with the Russians.
- That's fucking stupid.
- Because the Trump campaign knew damn well it was meeting with Russians.
- Dipshits.
Go figure: The Post has also been weirdly obsessed with the fact that Swalwell's brother and father still listed Fang on their Facebook friends list.
- It even ran a separate story today noting that they had finally removed her from their friends list.
- There still are people on my Facebook friends list from when I played that "Mafia Wars" timewaster game in 2009 or so.
- Nobody I played "Mafia Wars" with is, to my knowledge, a spy.
- Nor did we bang.
Oh hey, remember Rupert Murdoch's ex, Wendi Deng Murdoch?
- As we noted in 2018, she banged Tony Blair ALLEGEDLY, and also banged Vladimir Putin ALLEGEDLY.
- She's also a very good, non-alleged pal of Ivanka Trump! No known banging, not even any implied.
- Since we just said "banging" and "Ivanka Trump" in the same bullet point, let's just remind you filthy fuckaducks to review the commenting rules before you say something sexist.
- Jesus, you people.
- The point is that the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal reported that American counterintelligence officials did one of those "defensive briefings" with Jared Kushner to let him know that Ms. Murdoch "could be using her close friendship with Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to further the interests of the Chinese government, according to people familiar with the matter."
- Oddly, we haven't seen this mentioned in the New York Post or on Fox News in its round the clock coverage of Eric Swalwell: He Bang?
- The Wall Street Journal certainly never used the Post's favorite term for Ms. Fang, "honeytrap," to refer to Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife.
- We're just saying.
The takeaway: People will read stories if there's the possibility there was either fucking or espionage. Both? This story will never go away, no matter how much nothing is in it. The fucking thing will probably end up being rehashed in 2024, regardless of whether Joe Biden runs again.
- God help us.
- If you think this article was tedious, the fucking Axios story is more than three times as long.
- If you can, please set up a monthly $5 to $10 donation.
- Help, we're not sure we can stop.
Can't Follow Bannon, Giuliani's Bizarre, Made-Up JOE BIDEN CORRUPTION China Plot? Here, Try Some Crack!
We're gonna need a bigger pinboard!
Oh, the GOP wants to talk about FAKE DOSSIER do they? Want to talk about misinformation campaigns and foreign election interference? Yes, let's have that talk.
Let's talk about the bullshit Hunter Biden dossier these coprophagic lunatics swallowed whole after watching it slide out the back end of their own fake news ecosystem. Extra fiber from China eases the way!
Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny from NBC got the goods. (Again.) Apparently, a guy named Martin Aspen cooked up a 64-page "intelligence report" on Hunter Biden's supposed ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that's been circulating among Trump's allies for months now.
Only Martin Aspen doesn't exist, and neither does Typhoon Investigations, the "intelligence firm" that supposedly employs him. It took tech experts approximately eight seconds to figure out that the profile picture for this person was generated by AI, which is about as long as it will take any American to work out that whoever is drafting these tweets is not a native English speaker.
The "Martin Aspen" persona has only tweeted a few times, often in Chinese, and mainly criticizing China's policies on Uighurs, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Is it coincidence that Steve "Flood the Zone With Shit" Bannon, who was recently arrested on the yacht of a Chinese billionaire wanted for extradition by the Chinese government, has been swimming in the anti-CCP side of the pool with The Epoch Times and its Falun Gong fellow travelers? (Oh, hey, that was a Collins/Zadrozny joint, too!)
Maybe! And maybe not. But in any event, that's where our story picks up, with an economist named Stephen Balding, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government who published the piece on his own blog.
"I had really not wanted to do this but roughly 2 months ago I was handed a report about Biden activities in China the press has simply refused to cover. I want to strongly emphasize I did not write the report but I know who did," he told NBC at first.
After being confronted with proof that "Martin Aspen" was literal fake news, he admitted that "I authored small parts of the report and was involved in report preparation and review. As a researcher, and due to the understandable worry about foreign disinformation, it was paramount that the report document activity from acknowledged and public sources. Great care was taken to document, cite, and retain information so that acknowledged facts could be placed in the public domain."
Well, those are all words. But we're real glad to hear that Mr. Balding is worried about foreign disinformation.
"The primary author of the report, due to personal and professional risks, requires anonymity," Balding insisted.
And here's how this piece of LITERAL FAKE NEWS got laundered up through the conservative ecosystem.
Balding's blog was the primary driver of virality in conservative and conspiracy communities. The report itself was shared across Facebook and Twitter around 5,000 times, according to BuzzSumo, and more than 80 sites linked back to the blog, which was shared more than 25,000 times on Facebook and Twitter. Hyperpartisan and conspiracy sites like ZeroHedge and WorldNetDaily led the pack.
After the promise of a big reveal one day earlier, the document was also posted on the extremist forum 8kun by Q, the anonymous account behind the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.
On Twitter, the document was pushed by influencers in the QAnon community, as well as by Dinggang Wang, an anti-Chinese government YouTube personality who works for Guo Wengui, a billionaire who fled China amid accusations of bribery and other crimes. Republican Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, tweeted the document to his 2.3 million followers.
The claims themselves are standard disinformation fare — lots of official-sounding names and dates padded with breezy assertions of brazen lies as if they were well-known facts.
Who else works for Guo? Take it away, Mother Jones!
Much of [Steve] Bannon's work for Guo is related to media companies Guo has launched. A one-year contract between Guo and Bannon inked in 2018 reportedly paid the former Breitbart executive $1 million to introduce Guo's media company to "media personalities" and advise the company on "industry standards." Bannon is also listed as director of GTV Media, a media company launched in April by Guo.
Well, that sure is coincidental.
Here's a sample of Balding's fantastical extrapolation.
Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all. A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter's stake being worth in excess of $50 million.
Leave aside the whole English-as-a-second-language vibe for the moment — we'll come back to that one. The $1.5 billion figure has already been widely debunked as bullshit from "Clinton Cash" author Peter Schweizer. At some point Hunter Biden and his partners may have had $1.5 billion as a fundraising goal, but there's no indication they ever got anything like that level of investment from China or anywhere else. The rest of Balding's numbers are just invented out of whole cloth. This is less a smoking gun than a bottle of shampoo left unscrewed in your suitcase, slowly leaking Pantene all over your clothes.
Or maybe it's more like a thumb drive that falls out of an envelope when you ship it cross country via UPS!
It's clear that hacked emails and photos from Hunter Biden's phone have been floating around the wingnuttosphere for over a year now. Time says that someone offered them to Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine for $5 million last year, and Salon reports that Rudy himself passed on an offer for a similar cache this May, deeming the deal too sketchy.
When a blind computer repair guy finally surfaced the documents in a Delaware computer repair shop 3,000 miles away from Hunter Biden's home in Los Angeles this month, no mainstream media outlet would touch the story. And now that his Ukraine allegations have landed like a lead balloon, Roodles the Clown has been reduced to doing media hits hinting about a kiddie porn connection. Because no low is too low.
But if Rudy couldn't carry it across the finish line ... who could?
Well, Balding's post is dated October 22, when it was clear that Rudy's Ukraine-Biden gambit was going exactly nowhere. In it, Balding exhorted readers to forget about "the salacious revelations about laptop provenance" and concentrate instead on "the more mundane reality of influence and money of major United States political figures. Ill informed accusations of Russian hacking and disinformation face the documented reality of a major Chinese state financial partnership with the children of major political figures."
And indeed the wingers moved as one to throw China up against the wall and see if it would stick.
My father gave me an opportunity to work my way up in his company. Joe gave his son China.— Donald Trump Jr. (@Donald Trump Jr.) 1603374717.0
Well, one of the presidential candidates gave his child China all right. But sadly for Donald Trump Jr., he wasn't that child.
Trump's lapdog Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, was quick to shout that "Hunter Biden's" laptop was "not part of some Russian disinformation campaign." And maybe this time he was telling the truth. (First time's a charm!) Because the author of this Hunter Biden China dossier is clearly a proficient but non-native speaker of English. And the people flogging this shit the hardest are Bannon's anti-CCP buddies.
Want to watch Steve Bannon be interviewed by Rudy Giuliani about "China OWNS The BIDEN Crime Family?" LOL, no you do not!
Here, read this from Josh Rogin at the Washington Post instead:
Guo Wengui, a close ally of Stephen K. Bannon, has interjected himself and his "whistleblower movement" directly into the middle of the presidential election. His Chinese-language news website, GNews, has been publishing documents and videos purported to be from Hunter Biden's lost laptop. The substance of the material ranges from allegations of business ties with Chinese executives to lewd, personal content.
Pro-Trump websites are citing GNews to launder the information into English-language press. Banned from Twitter, Guo's followers have turned to other social media applications to disseminate the material. Guo claims to be an anti-CCP freedom fighter who is working to establish a "New Federal State of China."
That's a lot of coincidences for a Friday. So let's just close by noting that the exact same people who screamed that the Steele Dossier was FAKE NEWS, and Brett Kavanaugh's accusers were FAKE NEWS, just like all the women who accused Trump of sexual assault were FAKE NEWS, and Russian influence in the 2016 election was FAKE NEWS — those same people Jacob Wohl'd up their own LITERAL FAKE NEWS dossier about Hunter Biden and talked themselves into believing it was true. Demanded that social media platforms let it run riot on their platforms! And are currently excoriating actual news outlets for refusing to treat it as if it's real news.
FOUR MORE DAYS.
[NBC / Balding's World / WaPo]
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Obama: OF COURSE Dictators Want Trump To Win, He's Their Very Own Remote-Controlled Idiot!
We continue to like Barack Obama's new job of dickslapping Trump while pointing and laughing.
Hooray, time for your daily Barack Obama Clowns On Trump And Kicks Him In Dick video!
This actually came from the rally Obama did yesterday in Orlando, where he made fun of Trump for being jealous of coronavirus's TV ratings and also made fun of Trump for running away crying into his bunker from Lesley Stahl and his "60 Minutes" interview.
Turns out Obama went at Trump over his fears of Lesley Stahl from a whole DIFFERENT direction during his speech in Orlando. Why didn't we see this part and tell you it yesterday? It was all part of our master plan to give you a new Obama video every day, by being really busy and missing things entirely!
The theme of this section was Obama saying that if Trump has to fall down the stairs into the bunker when Lesley Stahl scares him, he FOR SURE is going to roll over for dictators who flatter him. And because Trump has been president for almost four years, we know that's exactly what Trump does with dictators. He fawns all over them. He is jealous of their power. He thinks they are big men, and that they are REAL leaders, because they have total control, and that's what he wants to be. He wants to be a REAL BIG GUY LEADER.
Here's Bamz:
'Trump said Putin, President Xi and Kim Jong Un want him to win... that's not a good thing... why are you bragging… https://t.co/rNJRUVauWr— Sky News (@Sky News) 1603817233.0
OBAMA: Our current president, he whines that '60 Minutes' is too tough. You think he's going to stand up to dictators? He thinks Lesley Stahl's a bully. Just yesterday, he said that Putin of Russia, Xi of China, and Kim Jong Un of North Korea want him to win. We know! We know because you've been giving them whatever they want for the last four years! Of course they want you to win! That's not a good thing. You shouldn't brag about the fact that some of our greatest adversaries think they'd be better off with you in office. Of course they do. What does that say about you? Think about that. Why are you bragging about that? C'mon. That doesn't make any sense.
You really have to watch the video to see Obama's facial expressions and realize just how hard he is mocking Trump.
As Obama explained, Trump had just the day before bragged about how all the world's tyrants want him elected, because they "don't want to deal with Sleepy Joe." Here is that:
Trump, who has repeatedly said that foreign leaders want Biden to win because Trump is so hard on them, now makes s… https://t.co/ID685hL8Dr— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1603728315.0
TRUMP: The only thing I can tell you for sure President Xi from China, President Putin from Russia, Kim Jong-un [from] North Korea, and I could name 40 others -- they're sharp as a tack, they don't want to deal with Sleepy Joe.
Oh no, the president of the United States has yet again gotten all the world's tyrants all sticky, with his jizz. He further recounted an imaginary private comment from a "world leader" who told him they really want Trump to win because they don't want to deal with somebody who "sleeps all the time." Suuuuuuure, Donald.
Indeed, most of the world's tyrants would love for Trump to be re-elected, because they get away with whatever they want when Trump is in the room, or when they send him love letters, or massage his stupid ego by telling him that "No, Donald, you did not win election because Vladimir run operation to suppress vote in Rust Belt states. You win election because you are so very smart and have completely normal American penis!" We have no doubt that Putin and Kim would love another four years with America as a laughingstock on the world stage.
Of course, Trump is mean to 'GIIIIIIINA these days, but we are also pretty sure China has some real goods on him, based on recent reporting about his secret bank account and his massive debts to the bank of China and whatnot. Remember there was that one kind of overlooked thing in the Steele Dossier about how the Trump team in 2016 was actually kind of glad for the focus on Russia, because it distracted from reporting on where Trump was really financially compromised by China? Nobody ever really looked into that one. They should look into it.
Anyway, as William Evanina, director of the National Counterterrorism and Security Center, stated in his assessment of election threats, China actually does not want Trump to win, but rather prefers Joe Biden. Of course, that assessment, in weasel words, also said China is not actively meddling in the election to make that happen for Biden like Russia is for Trump. Regardless, if Evanina's assessment is correct, China is probably tired of the dumbstupidest president who ever did live setting fire to America's corn and soybean farmers and declaring himself the victor in a massively destructive trade war.
The point is this post is that Barack Obama is right, Trump is an easily manipulated moron, and we really like Obama's new job, which is dickslapping Trump in the face while laughing and pointing. They should probably go ahead and give him another Nobel Peace Prize, just to piss Trump off.
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