Swalwell campaign urged to return cash from law firm tied to CCP: ‘Stop playing footsie’

FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Eric Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign recently received nearly $10,000 from the California office of a major Beijing law firm that has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a Fox News Digital investigation found.

A filing released this week reveals that Swalwell’s campaign received $9,999 from the DeHeng Law Firm PC on Dec. 30 and indicates the office is based in Pleasanton, California. The law firm’s website reveals that this office is their “Silicon Valley office” and appears to have only one lawyer working there.

Keliang “Clay” Zhu, who donated $5,000 to Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign last November and has already donated more than $10,000 to his House campaigns, is associated with the law firm and is the only name listed for the “Silicon Valley Office,” according to their website.

A Fox News Digital investigation found that the law firm was founded as the China Law Office, which was a subsidiary established by the CCP Ministry of Justice in the early 1990s before being renamed DeHeng Law Offices in 1995. Although the firm, which has more than two dozen offices in China, presents itself as independent, the firm and its lawyers continue to maintain long-standing cooperation with Chinese government departments and major corporations public.

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Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, speaks during a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Zhu, a native of China, touts several examples of how he helped Chinese state-owned enterprises and other Chinese companies gain a foothold in the United States, according to his biography. For example, he boasts of having represented a “major public company investment fund in the acquisition of majority stock in a Silicon Valley data analytics software company,” which he valued at $100 million.

Another biography touts how he “helped Chinese companies and funds make investments of more than $9 billion in chips, unmanned vehicles, new energy, artificial intelligence, industrial automation and biopharmaceuticals in the United States.”

“On behalf of Chinese companies, he repeatedly negotiated with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other organizations and carried out compliance plans, which significantly reduced the risks of non-compliance for Chinese customers in the United States,” the biography continues.

His biography also states that he helped advise “a Shenzhen government investment fund on its compliance with CFIUS regulations in the United States” and represented “WeChat users in a landmark lawsuit that sued President Trump and successfully ended his ban on WeChat in 2020.”

At the time, the first Trump administration sounded the alarm about WeChat and said “data collection threatened to allow the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal and proprietary information” and feared that the CCP could use the data to track down dissidents or control messaging inside the United States, such as by launching disinformation campaigns. Similar efforts to restrict WeChat have been made in countries including Australia and India, according to the White House.

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Zhu also has a history of fighting state-level legislation aimed at preventing China’s foreign land grab in the United States.

After a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit seeking to block a Texas law banning Chinese nationals from owning or leasing land in the state, Zhu called the legislation “unjust, unconstitutional and un-American,” according to AsAmNews, a daily news site focused on Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Zhu also expressed disapproval of a Florida law intended to prevent individuals from foreign countries adversaries of the United States, such as China, from purchasing land.

National security experts have been sounding the alarm that China is increasingly purchasing farmland, properties near military bases, and other land near places of strategic value, which has been accompanied by state-level legislation in places like Texas, Florida, Arizona, and others.

Chinese land grabs in the United States are an ongoing concern for lawmakers. Currently, Congress is considering several bills related to the issue, while nearly two dozen states have already passed laws aimed at implementing changes regarding foreign land purchases in their states. (Getty Images)

“All Asian Americans will feel the stigma and chilling effect created by this Florida law, just as discriminatory laws did to our ancestors more than a hundred years ago,” Zhu said in 2023 regarding an anti-land grab bill, according to a press release from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “We won’t go back.”

Michael Lucci, a leading China expert and founder and CEO of State Armor Action, sounded the alarm on these donations and called on Congress to reform “campaign finance laws to define donations made on behalf of foreign adversaries as bribes.”

“Congressman Swalwell must finally stop playing football with America’s main adversary: ​​Communist China. First there was his fiery romance with Fang Fang, a CCP spy, and now he is caught accepting campaign checks from Communist China’s favorite big law firm,” Lucci told Fox News Digital. “Congress must address this problem by reforming campaign finance laws to define donations made on behalf of foreign adversaries as bribes, and impose criminal penalties on those who make such donations. And Congress should go further by completely banning the acceptance of payment for any lobbying or influence work on behalf of a U.S. adversary, as the state of Texas did last year.”

Meanwhile, several of the company’s China-based partners have a history of working in Chinese politics, largely through the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which is a “key mechanism for multi-party cooperation and political consultation” under the leadership of the CCP, according to the CPPCC website, and is a crucial tool of the United Front strategy for influencing U.S. politics.

Chinese President Xi Jinping discusses the country’s economic and social development during a political rally in Beijing, China. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

For example, Zhixu Wu, who is “manager and senior partner” of DeHeng Law Offices based in Kunming, China, is a member of the “Standing Committee of the 13th Kunming Committee of the CPPCC” and a member of “the 12th Yunnan Committee of the CPPCC”. His biography also states that in 2017 he was previously awarded “the title of ‘Excellent League Member’ for the second assistance event of the National Lawyer Service Group”, which was approved by the “Eight Office of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, Lawyer Notarization Work Guidance Department of the Ministry of Justice.”

Degang Zheng, senior partner of the Shenzhen office, also touts his ties to the CPPCC, saying in his biography that he is an “Executive Committee member” of the CPPCC Shenzhen branch. Hongli MA, senior partner of the Hangzhou office, says he was awarded “three consecutive years of outstanding CPPCC members in Binjiang District, Hangzhou, in 2014, 2015 and 2016.”

Li Wang, another prominent lawyer and senior global partner in the Beijing office, touts how she “has served as general legal counsel to numerous PRC ministries, state-owned enterprises and private companies and institutions.” Her biography also states that she is the “Commissioner of the Beijing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference” and the “Chairman of Belt & Road Service Connections.”

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Rep. Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, was mocked on X this week after posting a video of himself lifting weights while trashing Republicans. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Swalwell’s ties to China have already come under scrutiny, particularly after Chinese national Christine Fang, also known as “Fang Fang,” was granted privileged access to him and his campaign. It was seen by U.S. officials as part of a China-linked counterintelligence effort aimed at influencing and cozying up to U.S. political figures.

Swalwell has repeatedly claimed that he severed ties as soon as U.S. intelligence officials warned him of the threat and that a Congressional ethics investigation into the matter ultimately found no wrongdoing on Swalwell’s part. However, he was ultimately removed by Republicans from his position on the House Intelligence Committee, with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy citing Swalwell’s past run-ins with a suspected Chinese spy.

Lucci told Fox News Digital that Swalwell should pledge to end any new alliances with America’s foreign adversaries and return funds he received from the DeHeng and Zhu law firms “to an organization that fights the evils of communism.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Swalwell and Zhu for comment on this story but did not receive a response by publication.