The Swalwell Timeline – WSJ

Over in the House, many Republicans want more than an explanation, writing in a Tuesday letter to the Speaker:

We write to you today out of concern with Congressman Eric Swalwell’s reported, close contacts with a Chinese Communist Party spy recently reported by Axios. Because of Rep. Swalwell’s position on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, his close interactions with Chinese intelligence services, however unintentional they may be, are an unacceptable national security risk. HPSCI handles some of the most sensitive information our government possesses — information critical to our national defense. As such, we urge you to immediately remove Rep. Swalwell from his position on the House Intelligence Committee.

According to the Axios story, the interactions included the alleged agent known as Fang Fang or Christine Fang placing an intern in Rep. Swalwell’s office and also helping to raise funds for his 2014 re-election campaign. Axios reported that the FBI gave Mr. Swalwell a defensive briefing sometime around 2015 to warn him of the threat.

Since Axios broke the story, one of the few disclosures Mr. Swalwell has been willing to make occurred in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, when the lawmaker clarified the timeline. Mr. Sciutto asked the Congressman if he had had any concerns about the woman before receiving the defensive briefing from the FBI. Rep. Swalwell responded:

No. Jim, I was shocked when, you know, just over six years ago, I was told about this individual. And then I offered to help, and I did help and I was thanked by the FBI for my help and that person is no longer in the country.

If Mr. Swalwell’s story is accurate, it means he was told sometime in late 2014 or earlier that he had unwittingly been conducting a relationship with a communist spy. If this is accurate, then how can one explain what happened next in Congress?

On Jan. 14, 2015, then-Minority Leader Pelosi announced that Rep. Swalwell was joining the House Intelligence Committee. Mrs. Pelosi was likely aware that he appeared to have little relevant experience for the highly sensitive position. “Congressman Swalwell’s determined leadership and energetic, fresh perspective will help our country meet the national security and intelligence challenges of the 21st century,” she said in a statement.

Back home in California, local press noticed that the 34-year-old Mr. Swalwell had scored something of a coup. Carla Marinucci reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that the congressman was “named to a plum position on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.”

And he didn’t just receive a seat on the committee. A subsequent press release from his office announced:

U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (CA-15) today was selected to serve as the senior Democrat on the Committee on Intelligence’s Subcommittee on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This newly established subcommittee is responsible for the oversight, policy, activities, and budget of the CIA.

Just a few weeks or months after being told by the FBI that he’d been duped into conducting some sort of relationship with a communist spy, a young backbencher in Congress was given a significant role overseeing the CIA?

Both Mr. Swalwell and the speaker need to explain who knew what and when about the Chinese infiltration of his political network and why many intelligence committee colleagues were not told, among other issues.

They must also address the process that led to Rep. Swalwell’s lead role among Democrats in overseeing the CIA. Who were the people who weighed in on the young congressman’s behalf when Mrs. Pelosi was preparing to hand out committee assignments? And don’t tell us it’s classified.

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A Champion for Liberty and Good Sense

The Journal’s James R. Hagerty writes an obituary for federal appeals court Judge Ralph Winter:

Mr. Winter served as a law clerk to Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice, when he was appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961… The two men bonded. As a speaker selected by the family for Justice Marshall’s funeral in 1993, Judge Winter said his former boss “was the irresistible force for justice, the immovable object against injustice and a warm, kind human being.”

Mr. Winter joined the Yale law faculty in 1962 and remained a full-time professor there until joining the appeals court in 1982. Especially during student uprisings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, being a conservative at Yale could be trying. “I’ve been called a fascist because I believe in small government,” he said in a 2017 oral history at Yale Law School, “which shows either a misunderstanding of me or a misunderstanding of fascism.”

In the 1970s, he bucked conventional wisdom on corporate-governance law. At the time, the consumer advocate

Ralph Nader

was calling for federal chartering of large corporations. William L. Cary, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, argued for minimum federal standards.

Delaware had grabbed the lion’s share of legal fees associated with granting corporate charters. Mr. Cary wrote a 1974 article saying the state had led a “race for the bottom” in legal standards. States, he said, had adopted laws that empowered managers and “watered the rights of shareholders vis-à-vis management down to a thin gruel.”

In a 1977 article replying to Messrs. Cary and Nader, Mr. Winter insisted that state regulation was generally preferable to federal rules. Competition among states had reduced regulation, he said, but in a way that benefited shareholders by reducing compliance costs and making companies more profitable.

“Only by ignoring the cost side of the cost-benefit judgment can one assume that ‘laxity’ always injures shareholders and thus sustain the conclusion that the competition among states for chartering has worked to their detriment,” he wrote.

Mr. Winter’s argument won the day, and U.S. workers and investors can be forever grateful.

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This column has been corrected. An earlier version misstated Nancy Pelosi’s title in the 114th Congress.

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Mr. Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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