House lawmakers Monday subpoenaed the Homeland Security Department over whistleblower disclosures “raising serious concerns” about Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz’s purported ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said he is seeking what whistleblowers have described as group chats about Mr. Walz among DHS employees under the “Nation State Threat — National Functional Team.”
The chats, Mr. Comer said in a letter sent Monday to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, contain “information about Governor Walz” related to a House investigation into the CCP’s attempts to weaken and corrupt the U.S.
The Oversight panel has been investigating the CCP’s infiltration and influence campaign against the U.S., and plans to author legislation, Mr. Comer said, “to combat CCP political warfare targeting prominent Americans for elite capture.”
Mr. Comer, Kentucky Republican, launched an investigation into Mr. Walz’s ties to China in August, citing the Minnesota governor’s reported 30 trips to the country.
Mr. Walz, for example, organized a trip to China for high school students, paid by the Chinese government, and set up a private company that coordinated annual student trips to China that he led until 2003. The company was dissolved before he began serving in Congress in 2007.
Mr. Walz also served as a fellow at the Macau Polytechnic University, a Chinese institution that characterizes itself as having a “long held devotion to and love for the motherland.” He also spoke alongside the president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, which, a year later, the Department of State exposed as “a Beijing-based organization tasked with co-opting subnational governments,” including efforts “to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda,” Mr. Comer said.
The subpoena seeks documents related to the DHS chats about Mr. Walz and all intelligence-related reports and regional intelligence notes related to the governor or his staff.
“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,” Mr. Comer wrote.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, denounced Mr. Comer’s subpoena as a “political stunt” coming on the day before the vice presidential debate. He said Mr. Walz has been “a lifelong champion of democracy and freedom who has stood up for decades to the CCP and fiercely advocated for the human rights of the people of China, including by co-sponsoring the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and meeting with the Dalai Lama and advocating for Tibet.”
The Harriz-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about the probe.
Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann in August told the Associated Press that the governor’s record is one of standing up to China’s Communist Party and fighting for human rights and democracy.
“Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda,” Mr. Tschann said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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