A conservative legal firm launched an investigation on Monday into Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s over the vice presidential candidate’s “extensive, multi-decade” ties to China.
The America First Legal Foundation pressed the Minnesota governor’s office, the FBI, and the Justice Department for documents on Walz’s links to China, according to Freedom of Information Act requests sent to the entities shared with The Daily Wire. The firm said that Walz’s numerous trips to China, and his professional and academic ties to the country could have major national security implications.
“Now that he is the official Democrat nominee for Vice President of the United States, Gov. Walz will receive classified national security briefings,” AFL lawyer Michael Ding wrote in a letter to the FBI. “If there is reason to believe that Gov. Walz is, willingly or unwillingly, an asset of a foreign communist power, then the American people have a right to be informed of all available information before they cast their ballots in November.”
Walz’s relationship has drawn scrutiny since Vice President Kamala Harris tapped the governor as her running mate. Walz has visited China at least 30 times since the 1980s, and while in Congress was a fellow at China’s Macao Polytechnic University, which says it promotes “devotion to and love for the motherland.” In August, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Walz’s connection to China. Oversight Chair James Comer said earlier this month that the FBI has so far ignored his requests for information.
In its request to the governor’s office, AFL asked for all documents that reference CCP-backed “Confucius Institutes” or any communication with China’s Ministry of Education, members of the CCP, and the Beijing Genomics Institute.
“The American people have a right to know if Governor Walz was using his office to further the interests of the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which employs tactics that seek to influence U.S. lawmakers to achieve policies that are more favorable to China,” America First Legal lawyer Robert Crossin wrote to the Minnesota governor’s office, according to a letter shared with The Daily Wire.
“Your prompt production of the requested documents will ensure that the American people can know all the facts before they cast their ballots in November.”
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AFL also asked for communications related to China with the Hormel Institute at the University of Minnesota.
“Further, former senior national security officials have expressed grave concerns that the Hormel Institute at the University of Minnesota is ‘helping a foreign adversary’ by working with Chinese institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that ‘have direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army,” Crossin wrote.
The letters argue that the document requests should be expedited because of their relevance to the upcoming presidential election.