House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) said Thursday the FBI is withholding the information he requested about Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s trips to China and whether he interacted with Chinese Communist Party affiliates.
Comer wrote a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray reiterating his demand for any documents and communications the FBI possesses related to various Chinese entities Walz may have interacted with during his estimated 30 trips to China, and demanding to know whether the FBI and Walz’s office discussed these engagements.
“The deadline to produce such documents and information has passed, and the Bureau has failed to provide any response to the Committee. The FBI’s silence regarding Mr. Walz’s documented relations with CCP affiliates is inexcusable,” Comer said.
The FBI did not provide Comer the information he is seeking after he wrote them a similar letter in August when Walz became Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 running mate and his trips to China received fresh scrutiny.
Walz has expressed support for a collaborative relationship between the U.S. and China, while criticizing Beijing’s human-rights abuses. Most U.S. policymakers believe an adversarial approach to China is necessary for the U.S. to counter its rising geopolitical ambitions and economic firepower.
As a high school teacher in the 1990s, Walz organized China trips that were partially sponsored by the CCP. A trip in 1994 doubled as a honeymoon after Walz planned his wedding to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the CCP’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.
In 2007, when Walz was in congress, he was a fellow with Macau Polytechnic University, an institution aligned with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global-investment program key to China’s growing influence worldwide, especially with lesser developed nations. Comer’s previous request to the FBI highlighted Walz’s trips and the fellowship.
Now, Comer is expanding his investigation to include Walz’s ties to a Minnesota-based research facility that partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab at the center of the leak-leak theory of Covid-19 origins.
A Washington Examiner investigation earlier this month revealed that during his congressional tenure, Walz secured millions of funding for the Hormel Institute, a research center that collaborated with the Wuhan lab on Covid-19 research and a structural biology project. U.S. intelligence officials have found that scientists at the Wuhan facility worked with the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, on public health and biosafety projects, including research on coronavirus strains distinct from Covid-19.
The Hormel Institute has also collaborated with the Beijing Genomics Institute, an organization the Pentagon considers to be a “Chinese military company,” Fox News reported.
“The FBI told the Committee that the Bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force investigates this kind of CCP activity,” Comer added.
The Committee is concerned that Mr. Walz’s involvement with Chinese entities and officials may have allowed the CCP to influence his decision-making as a congressman and governor and potentially would allow the CCP to influence the White House should Mr. Walz be elected vice president.”