Sort of, it's extremely misleading. It suggests that there is no evidence of espionage because charges were never pressed, but consider:
>According to four former intelligence officials, in the 2000s, a staffer in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco field office was reporting back to the MSS. While this person, who was a liaison to the local Chinese community, was fired, charges were never filed against him. (One former official reasoned this was because the staffer was providing political intelligence and not classified information—making prosecution far more difficult.) The suspected informant was “run” by officials based at China’s San Francisco Consulate, said another former intelligence official. The spy’s handler “probably got an award back in China” for his work, noted this former official, dryly.
Here's the rest of what that article says about the topic. I'm not sure why it brings up the topic 2x in the same article. It looks like this paragraph is a revision of the first.
"Former intelligence officials told me that Chinese intelligence once recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about local politics. (A spokesperson for Feinstein said the office doesn’t comment on personnel matters or investigations, but noted that no Feinstein staffer in California has ever had a security clearance.)"
None of that contradicts what your first article said, that the staffer didn't know he was being recruited. He was talking about local politics to someone who worked for the Chinese government who was pumping him for information.
The rest is just speculation on the part of someone the reporter talked to about how he could have theoretically committed a crime despite not being prosecuted.
>He was talking about local politics to someone who worked for the Chinese government.
Everyone in the government contractor industry (or government itself) gets annual training on spotting these sorts of leaks. Just discussing any stuff (even if you don't work with classified things) you're doing at work with a foreign national is touchy enough that many people avoid doing it all together. Everyone who works for the federal government or a company that works for the federal government is well aware of this. This isn't an innocent mistake. It's highly unlikely that this guy didn't know what he was doing was questionable.
This guy wasn't working in the defense industry, and he wasn't in a sensitive enough position to warrant any kind of clearance.
I'm sure someone talked to him about it, but it's unlikely he got any sort of serious training.
He supposedly talked to someone who worked their way into his life over several years about non-sensitive, non-classified material related to local politics. I imagine he would have been more careful/aware if the "friend" was asking about classified information, or if his "friend" hadn't done it very slowly.
Fortunately we have the indictments now that demonstrates the methods, if not not the sources, of similar activities described in the Politico expose, and in light of this it makes Feinstein’s office’s charitable characterization of that staffer look awfully naive. That no California staffer ever held a security clearance is a response to the wrong question, even an intentional misdirection.
The President, and some partisan media organizations were pushing a narrative that the mainstream media was covering up a conspiracy. I'm assuming the people down-voting believe the conspiracy theory.
Update: Funny, now the comment is upvoted and my question is downvoted :-)