Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Oversight Committee, subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security on Monday after whistleblower information revealed an internal employee group chat discussing “serious concerns” about Gov. Tim Walz’s, D-Minn., ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“[T]he Committee has recently received whistleblower disclosures informing the Committee of serious concern among Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel regarding a longstanding connection between the CCP and Minnesota Governor Timothy James Walz,” Comer wrote in the subpoena letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “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 is seeking records from the group chat from July 1 to the present day as well as relevant intelligence reports “from November 2023 to present,” as noted in an accompanying Monday press release.
The subpoena follows the start of an August probe into Walz’s “extensive engagement” with the CCP.
The committee launched a “government-wide” investigation earlier this year investigating the CCP’s “ongoing efforts to target, influence, and infiltrate every sector and community in the United States,” and has learned of efforts to influence subnational politicians, “including state governors,” according to the Monday press release.
“[I]f 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,” the letter states.
Walz previously claimed he has been to China 30 times. In mid-August, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., demanded answers from the Pentagon, claiming the Minnesota Democrat had presented an “obvious security risk” in light of “at least a dozen trips he took to China while serving in the National Guard,” according to a report from the New York Post.
Walz speaks Mandarin and has fondly remembered the time he spent in China, the Post has also noted. “No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again,” he reportedly said in 1990. “They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience.”
Reports also suggest that Walz and his wife’s wedding date was intentionally planned to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The two then opened a Chinese tourism company in 1995, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Walz previously made comments suggesting he was in Hong Kong during the massacre.
“As a young man I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong province and was in Hong Kong in May 1989. As the events were unfolding, several of us went in. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong,” he said in a 2014 congressional hearing that marked the 25-year anniversary of the massacre. “There was a large number of people–especially Europeans, I think–very angry that we would still go after what had happened. But it was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels … and the opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.”
Despite this claim going largely unchecked for over a decade, a recent report from the Washington Free Beacon suggests that Walz was at home in Nebraska at the time of the massacre.
Walz also apparently heaped praise on the Chinese communist system in a 1991 class he taught as a high school teacher, as detailed in another report from the Free Beacon.
“It means that everyone is the same and everyone shares,” he said in 1991 according to a local Nebraska outlet, as noted by the Free Beacon. “The doctor and the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provide housing and 14 kg or about 30 pounds of rice per month. They get food and housing.”
“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,” Comer’s letter reads.
