The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security on Monday following whistleblower allegations about an internal employee group chat discussing “serious concerns” about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s China ties — some of which have been documented in classified files.
Oversight panel Chairman James Comer revealed the internal debate on the “longstanding connection” between Walz and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in a Monday letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, according to a copy obtained by The Post.
“Specifically, through whistleblower disclosures, the Committee has learned of a non-classified, Microsoft Teams group chat among DHS employees—titled ‘NST NFT Bi-Weekly Sync’—that contains information about Governor Walz that is relevant to the Committee’s investigation,” Comer (R-Ky.) wrote.
The group chat initials stand for “Nation State Threat — National Functional Team,” according to an Oversight spokesman.
“The Committee has also learned that further relevant information regarding Governor Walz has been memorialized in both classified and unclassified documents in the control of DHS,” he also noted.
Comer demanded all records on the internal group chat between July 1 and the present, as well as any Intelligence Information Reports or Regional Intelligence Notes between November 2023 and the present.
“[I]f 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,” he told Mayorkas.
The subpoena comes as officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned in a briefing earlier this month that China’s election interference efforts have been focused on state and local government officials.
This year, the Oversight Committee ramped up an investigation into the federal government’s response to broadening CCP influence to “weaken and corrupt” the US.
It began targeting Walz’s “cozy” relationship with China by making a records request of the FBI just before the Minnesota governor and former US House lawmaker became the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
The FBI never responded to the request.
Rep. Jim Banks, a Navy Reserve officer and member of the House Armed Services Committee, also separately asked for information from the Pentagon about 30 trips Walz had made to China, a dozen of which occurred while he was a member of the US military between 1989 and 2005.
“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,” Banks (R-Ind.) told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in an Aug. 13 letter.
Military members must complete foreign travel reports when returning to the US, which may have included “any potentially suspicious interaction that occurred,” he added.
Brian J. Cavanaugh, a former National Security Council senior director in the Trump White House, previously said that if Walz didn’t file any reports, “the risks of him jeopardizing national security are very real, especially given his tenor and tone towards his time in China.”
In 1990, Walz reminisced of his first days in the Far East: “No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again. … They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience.”
During those years, Walz also served in the Army National Guard, but he abandoned his unit in 2005 to run for Congress — an action that has dogged him since his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018.
Walz speaks Mandarin and first visited China in 1989 as an American history and English instructor and three years later as a newlywed with his wife, Gwen, as part of an exchange program with US high school students in Beijing.
He chose their wedding date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, a decision that Gwen Walz cryptically said was so he would “have a date he’ll always remember,” according to a report in the Guardian.
The two cofounded a China tourism company in 1995 that was dissolved three years later by the state of Nebraska over its failure to pay $26 in business operating taxes, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Walz still organized further trips for students in 1998 and 2001, and in 2002 founded another educational entity with the same name in Minnesota, which he touted during his 2006 run for Congress.
In another report unearthed by the Free Beacon, Walz expressed admiration for China’s communist system.
“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.”
Comer has asked for all the DHS internal documents to be turned over to his committee by Oct. 7.
The Post has reached out to reps for the Harris-Walz campaign and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
