Growing number of top Republicans call for Swalwell removal from House Intelligence Committee
Pelosi 'has full confidence' in Swalwell, speaker's office says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}More top Republicans are calling for Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., to be removed from the House Intelligence Committee after a report from Axios linked Swalwell with a suspected Chinese spy.
"He should not sit on the House Intelligence Committee and have access to classified information," Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark, told "America's Newsroom" on Thursday. "Nancy Pelosi needs to answer what she knew and when she knew it. If Eric Swalwell was briefed about this woman in 2015, surely Nancy Pelosi, the House leader, a member of the Gang of Eight, which has access to the most classified secrets of our nation's government, knew it as well, that she kept him on the House Intelligence Committee for these last five years. They both have a lot of questions to answer and they need to do so in public today."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Republicans including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., were critical of Swalwell.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who appointed Swalwell in 2015 to the secretive House Intelligence Committee, which led the impeachment investigation into President Trump, told Fox News she will back Swalwell's continued service on the committee, which has access to classified material and oversees activities of the U.S. intelligence community.
Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, listens during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 24, 2020. Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“The Speaker has full confidence in Congressman Swalwell’s service in the Congress and on the Intelligence Committee," Pelosi's spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement to Fox News Wednesday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Hawley said it's "absolutely unbelievable" that Swalwell is still on the committee.
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"We've seen the Washington politicians, the D.C. establishment, look the other way with China for years and years now," Hawley told "Tucker Carlson Tonight." "It's not as if they haven't known that the trade policies and other economic policies that we've pursued with China have been ruinous for American workers."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"This is a national security threat," McCarthy told "Fox & Friends" Thursday. "Now we have Eric Swalwell, who's been swindled by the Chinese, but what's even more interesting here is why did he attack the American Director of Intelligence John Ratcliffe's report talking about the expansion of China spying throughout ... just last week."
"Real life presidential [and] #ManchurianCandidate #EricSwalwell caught 'RED-handed' in 'compromising' positions with Communist Chinese spy #FangFang, who raised BIG [money and] gave Swalwell 'favors,'" Brooks wrote on Twitter. "GOP: Remove Swalwell from Intelligence [Committee and] Congress."
Fox News' Caleb Parke contributed to this report.