Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, has had a relationship with the communist Chinese spanning decades, a relationship that has caused much concern as the 2024 presidential election nears this November.
According to Time, the Minnesota governor has traveled to the People’s Republic of China over 30 times, including for his honeymoon, which was mentioned in Walz’ congressional biography.
But Walz’ links to China have come under scrutiny in recent months, with Republicans pointing out the issue with having a potential vice president in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party.
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability launched an investigation on September 30, after a whistleblower informed the committee of Walz’ ties to China. A subpoena was issued to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to provide the committee with intelligence reports, documents, and any communications relating to Walz and his CCP links.
Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a news release the DHS has information regarding Walz on file in both classified and unclassified documents that will be relevant to their investigation.
“The Committee has recently received whistleblower disclosures informing the Committee of serious concern among Department of Homeland personnel regarding a longstanding connection between the CCP and Minnesota Governor Timothy James Walz. Specifically, through whistleblower disclosures, the Committee has learned of a non-classified, Microsoft Teams group chat among DHS employees – titled ‘NST NFT Bi-Weekly Sync’ – that contains information about Governor Walz that is relevant to the Committee’s investigation. The Committee has also learned that further relevant information regarding Governor Walz has been memorialized in both classified and unclassified documents in the control of DHS,” Comer said.
Comer stated the investigation into Walz had been going on for some time in order to understand to what extent the CCP had been able to infiltrate, influence, and weaken the U.S. through its relationship with a state governor.
“The Committee’s investigation of the CCP – begun long before Governor Walz was elevated to be the vice-presidential candidate for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris – seeks to understand the extent of the CCP’s infiltration and influence campaign and to identify legislative reforms to combat CCP political warfare targeting prominent Americans for elite capture. In particular, if a state governor and major political party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States has been a witting or unwitting participant in the CCP’s efforts to weaken our nation, this would strongly suggest that there are alarming weaknesses in the federal government’s effort to defend the United States from the CCP’s political warfare that must be urgently addressed,” Comer wrote.
Walz fashions himself as a moderate Democrat, however, some of his past comments have come under the spotlight, including Walz once saying during an interview, “one person’s socialism, is another person’s neighborliness.”
According to Fox News, Walz has attempted to downplay his visits to China, walking back previous statements he made during a congressional hearing in 2016, when he said he had visited China “dozens of times.” A spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign is now insisting it was “closer to 15.”
While the number of trips Walz made to China appear to be getting a whitewash by Harris’ campaign, Walz lived and worked in both Hong Kong and mainland China as a teacher in an era when China was still largely cut off from the rest of the world. After a language training program in Hong Kong, Walz reportedly relocated to Foshan in the Guangdong province in southern China teaching English and American History.
Walz seems to have a habit of stretching the truth, however, after he was caught out during the vice presidential debate Tuesday, lying about his presence during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong, where official numbers of protestors killed by the People’s Liberation Army ranged from 400 to several thousand.
When asked to clarify the discrepancy in what Walz had previously claimed, he gave the moderator a non-answer, and then said he is a “knucklehead at times,” and “I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
Tim Walz’s meandering answer on China was so bad that even the moderators had to ask a follow up to remind him what the original question was:
“Governor Walz, you said you were in Hong Kong during the deadly Tiananmen Square Protests in the spring of 1989. But Minnesota Public… pic.twitter.com/NMB8vAwryJ— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) October 2, 2024
The next day, Walz was still unable to get his story straight, repeating that he only had “15 back and forths” to China with his students, and further claiming he wanted to teach Chinese students about democracy.
JUST IN: Tim Walz somehow botches his clarification of his 1989 visit to China worse than his response during the debate.
Walz has falsely claimed on multiple occasions that he was in Hong Kong during the tragedy in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.
During the debate, he fumbled… pic.twitter.com/gzyWJRBIEE
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 2, 2024
Fox News reported Tuesday, the travel had allegedly been paid for by the Chinese government.
Oh damnnnn!! So CHINA paid for Tim Walz’s trips over there. He is being investigated….as he should be. This is crazy. pic.twitter.com/NGvh6fdskH
— Ames (@Ames2420) October 1, 2024
The Daily Mail reported Walz’ ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, the likely the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Walz has further come under scrutiny after it was discovered he secured approximately $7 million in funding for the Hormel Institute at the University of Minnesota, which published research and worked closely with Chinese scientists from the Wuhan lab.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., wrote a letter to the institute, which was obtained by the Daily Mail, and demanded to know the full extent of the institute’s involvement with the Chinese lab, which Cruz said is a national security concern.
“I write to you today with growing concern regarding the Hormel Institute’s long standing partnership with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) … It is critical to understand the full extent of your institute’s involvement in a partnership that risks benefitting our nation’s chief geopolitical adversary … Your institute’s ongoing partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and by extension the People’s Liberation Army, reflects a troubling disregard for national security concerns,” Cruz wrote.
