James Comer expands investigation into Tim Walz’s China ties – Washington Examiner

In a letter dated Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Comer expressed concerns about Walz’s promotion of a group called the Hormel Institute as governor of Minnesota, which Washington Examiner reported in September that Walz was working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The top Republican renewed his August demand that the agency release all documents on Chinese companies with which Walz has been associated over the years.

“According to recent reports, during his time in Congress, Mr. Walz ‘helped secure over $2 million’ and ‘lobbied for a $5 million federal grant’ to the Hormel Institute, a ‘Minnesota-based medical research center that has previously collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China,'” Comer wrote in the letter to Wray. “The Wuhan Institute of Virology has close ties to the CCP and has been implicated in the creation of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Comer’s letter also cited a Fox News report describing the Hormel Institute’s collaboration with the Beijing Genomics Institute, which the Pentagon described earlier this year as a “Chinese military contractor.” The Hormel Institute’s parent company, the University of Minnesota, denied in a recent statement to the Washington Examiner that the institute has a “formal connection” with the WIV or the Beijing Genomics Institute.

However, journal records indicate that researchers at the Hormel Institute are collaborating on projects with staff at the WIV and the Beijing Genomics Institute.

For the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Walz’s “documented relationships with members of the CCP are inexcusable,” the letter states.

Since it was announced that Walz would be Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate, Republicans have sharply criticized Walz for his apparent ties and sympathies for China.

Walz said in 2016 that he did not fall into the category that China “necessarily has to have a hostile relationship” with the United States.

According to multiple reports, Walz has traveled to China 30 times, including for his honeymoon. Comer mentioned in the letter that Walz had previously organized a partially CCP-sponsored trip to China for his students when he taught at a high school in Minnesota.

Lawmakers are also investigating Walz’s previous teaching fellowship dating to at least 2007 at China’s Macau Polytechnic University. Macau Polytechnic University is pushing the Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure program and a key element of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to exert foreign influence. New York Post reported.

“The FBI appears to find these troubling facts too unconvincing to require its cooperation with a congressional investigation,” Comer told Wray, citing new revelations about Walz’s ties to the Hormel Institute.

“The former CEO of the Hormel Institute, Dr. Zigang Dong, ‘abruptly resigned from his post’ in 2019; ‘[a]At about the same time it became known [he] was involved in an FBI investigation … that looked into his ‘possible failure to disclose foreign support when applying for grants,'” Comer wrote in the letter. “Mr. Dong is ‘a longtime … donor to Mr. Walz’s political career,’ according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.”

In his letter, Comer noted that the FBI had informed the House Oversight Committee that the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force was “investigating this type of CCP activity.”

The Foreign Influence Task Force was created by Wray in 2017 “to identify and combat malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States.”

Comer wrote in the letter that he was “concerned that Mr. Walz’s involvement with Chinese organizations and officials may have enabled the CCP to influence his decisions as a congressman and governor, and that the CCP may also have influence over the White House if Mr. Walz is elected vice president.”

He requests any communication between the FBI and Walz’s office “concerning warnings or tips regarding subnational government officials collaborating with the People’s Republic of China, the CCP, and CCP proxies,” a copy of the letter says.

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In addition, the Republican is requesting all documents and information held by the FBI about the Beijing Genomics Institute, the Hormel Institute and Zigang. Comer set September 19 as the deadline for a response.

The FBI declined to comment.