Eric Swalwell claims ‘nobody’ has been a ‘bigger victim of the weaponization of the intelligence community than me’

"I want to speak though to a larger concern that I have with the bill and I first want to speak personally because there's nobody on this committee who has been a bigger victim of the weaponization of the intelligence community than me," Swalwell said.

"I have had my cell phone data subpoenaed and procured by the Trump administration. In 2012, a district with 40 percent Asian Americans, an Asian volunteer helped my campaign. I was later asked by the FBI to help the FBI understand who this person was. I did, [I] cooperated. They took care of a threat I was not aware of. And then years later under the Trump administration, an IC official leaked my cooperation, reverted it, suggested wrongdoing, Fox News ran with it a member of this committee filed an ethics report against me," Swalwell said, noting that he has received "thousands of death threats."

"I was removed from the intelligence committee by Speaker McCarthy to only learn a few months ago at the Ethics Committee took years for that complaint, to find that what was alleged was not substantiated, and the complaint was closed and no wrongdoing was found.

"So I know what it's like when an administration misuses the intelligence community to go after an enemy. I know it, I felt it, paid the price for it."

HR 6570 is a bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to provide "greater transparency and oversight," and was introduced by Rep Andy Biggs on December 4.

Swalwell was most famously accused of having a Chinese spy, Christina Fang, as a staffer at his Dublin, California office.

Though the House Ethics Committee concluded its investigation and chose not to take action against Swalwell, his critics have maintained that he was compromised by "Fang-Fang," with Swalwell being heckled in an August town hall.

"Where's Fang-Fang?" one man shouted from the back of the room.