The Chinese Communist Party saw Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a prime “target” for their influence operations in the US, according to internal Department of Homeland Security communications shared the same day that Vice President Kamala Harris picked him as her running mate.
“You all have no idea how this feeds into what prc [the People’s Republic of China] has been doing here with him and local gov,” a DHS official wrote Aug. 6 on an internal “Nation State Threat — National Functional Team” chat, which a whistleblower recently disclosed to a congressional committee.
“It’s seriously a line of the intel,” the official added with alarm. “Target someone who is perceived they can get to DC.”
The House Oversight Committee released the message after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his agency were “wholly unresponsive” to records requests about Walz’s China ties, which committee Chairman James Comer said “raises serious concerns about the Department’s fulfillment of its mission to resolutely protect the nation’s homeland.”
“The Committee is releasing the above message as an example of communications within DHS’s possession in which DHS officials express concern about the CCP targeting politicians and their influence operations at the state and local levels—and specifically, concerns about the CCP’s influence operations as they relate to Governor Walz,” Comer (R-Ky.) wrote in a Tuesday letter to Mayorkas.
“A whistleblower has provided further information to the Committee that indicates officials from DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have been involved in the Department’s investigative and/or intelligence work connected with the CCP, the state of Minnesota, and Governor Walz,” Comer added.
The whistleblower divulged that DHS also had information on Walz “memorialized in both classified and unclassified documents,” according to the chairman’s Sept. 30 letter accompanying the subpoena.
The message comes one day after an alleged ex-girlfriend of Walz, who met the future congressman and governor in China in 1989, said their tumultuous relationship drove her to the brink of suicide after he hinted at a marriage proposal that never came to pass.
The woman, Jenna Wang, was a daughter of a Chinese Communist Party official and the two met while Walz was teaching American history and English at a high school in Foshan, Guangdong Province.
Republicans have homed in on at least 30 visits by Walz, who speaks Mandarin, to China, a dozen of which occurred while he was also serving in the Army National Guard.
“Any individual traveling dozens of times to an adversary nation in a personal capacity while having access to classified information poses an obvious security risk,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) wrote in an August letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about Walz’s trips as a senior-ranking Guardsman between 1989 and 2005.
Walz also falsely claimed several times while serving in Congress that he was in Hong Kong preparing to go to Foshan at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989, but later claimed that he “misspoke” and actually arrived in China later that year.
“I’ve tried to do the best I can, but I’ve not been perfect, and I’m a knucklehead at times, but it’s always been about that those same people elected me to Congress for 12 years,” the former rep admitted in his Oct. 1 debate against GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
Walz married his wife Gwen on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square atrocity, “a date he’ll always remember” his wife said, according to the Guardian.
In interviews since those days, Walz has said he “will never be treated that well again” as he was as an instructor in China and spoke favorably of the economic conditions in the Communist nation.
“It means that everyone is the same and everyone shares,” he told Nebraska’s Alliance Times-Herald in 1991. “The doctor and the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provide housing and 14 kg, or about 30 pounds of rice, per month. They get food and housing.”
US intelligence officials have repeatedly warned in election briefings this year that China is primarily seeking to influence state and local government officials rather than those running for federal office.
Comer has reiterated his demands for all records by Nov. 4 — the day before the election — on the internal group chat between July 1 and the present and any Intelligence Information Reports or Regional Intelligence Notes between November 2023 and the present.
He also asked for DHS Office of Legislative Affairs senior adviser Jacob Marx to sit for a transcribed interview.
Reps for DHS and the Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.