The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding intelligence reports and communications involving Gov. Tim Walz‘s (D-MN) “connections” to the Chinese Community Party as Republicans amp up investigations of the Democratic vice presidential nominee ahead of the 2024 election.
In a subpoena, committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said a whistleblower claimed there is a group chat among Department of Homeland Security employees entitled “NST NFT Bi-Weekly Sync” that “contains information about Governor Walz that is relevant to the Committee’s investigation.”
Comer pushed back on claims that the investigation is politically motivated, arguing the committee’s probe into the CCP began “long before Governor Walz was elevated to be the vice-presidential candidate for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.”
“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 in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
This is the latest push in House Republicans’ investigation involving Walz’s ties to China, after multiple reports that he visited the country 30 times — including for his honeymoon. Walz also previously organized a partially CCP-sponsored trip to China for his high school students when he taught at Alliance High School in Minnesota in 1993.
Comer has sent letters to the FBI regarding Walz’s promotion of the Hormel Institute, which the Washington Examiner reported in September partners with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
GOP lawmakers have scrutinized how Walz’s extensive time in the communist country may have influenced any of his foreign policy stances or whether he would be reluctant to confront Chinese aggression should be elected as vice president. When Walz first began visiting China, U.S.-China relations were not as adversarial as the two nations actively tried to bolster their ties for economic interests.
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Comer is requesting that the Homeland Security Department provide materials, unredacted, relating to the group chat as well as intelligence information reports and notes from November 2023 to present relating to Walz and his staff.
The subpoena requests Mayorkas appear before the committee with the materials on Oct. 7, 2024, at 10 a.m.