For months, Democrats convinced themselves that the Epstein files held the key to bringing down Donald Trump. They demanded transparency; they demanded accountability. The funny thing is that they didn’t demand applying the same standard to themselves. If you listened to the Democrats over the past year, they sounded like transparency hawks.
And here's the thing about the Epstein files: If they contained anything incriminating against Trump, the Biden administration, which tried every corrupt play imaginable to stop Trump from returning to office, would have released them without hesitation. Instead, it was Trump who campaigned on releasing the files, specifically because Biden refused to do so. Democrats said that the crusade was about transparency. Yet today, one of the loudest voices in that crusade is scrambling to keep his own files locked in a drawer, and the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) went all in with the premise that the Trump administration was engaged in a cover-up and insisted that if Trump had nothing to hide, he’d release all of the files. The files have all been released, and, of course, he’s still not happy, but the key thing here is that Swalwell didn't just support releasing the documents — he made it his cause. At a congressional hearing, Swalwell grilled FBI Director Kash Patel with a pointed question: "If the president is not implicated, then why not release everything?" On MSNBC, he asked, “Where the hell are these files? And why are you keeping Donald Trump's name, to the degree that you are, out of them?"
Yet curiously, when it comes to the potential release of files relating to Chinese spy operations, Swalwell stopped identifying as a transparency hawk.
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FBI Director Kash Patel is reportedly weighing the release of investigative files tied to Swalwell's past relationship with Christine "Fang Fang" Fang, a Chinese national accused of running a political influence operation for the Chinese Communist Party between 2011 and 2015. Fang helped fundraise for Swalwell's 2014 re-election campaign and placed an intern in his congressional office. The FBI briefed Swalwell on her suspected activities in 2015, at which point he cut off contact, and she left the country. The Justice Department never filed charges, and the House Ethics Committee closed its investigation in May 2023 without action.
Swalwell, of course, denies any wrongdoing. Fine. Then he should have no problem with the files coming out, right?
Wrong.
His attorneys, Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker, fired off a cease-and-desist letter to Patel demanding that the FBI stop the releases immediately. "The Congressman has never been accused of wrongdoing in that matter, and your attempt to release the file is a transparent attempt to smear him and undermine his campaign for Governor of California," they wrote. "Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability.”
Swalwell is clearly terrified of what those files might say, and the standard he set for the Epstein files is coming back to haunt him. Now, his social media feed is full of posts accusing Trump of trying to interfere with his gubernatorial bid and spinning it as a positive for his campaign.
But if he’s not implicated, why not release everything? Why fight it if you have nothing to hide?
