Home Republicans are setting their sights on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ vice presidential candidate — the most recent indication that they’re utilizing their slim majority to go after former President Donald Trump’s political opponents.
Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) on Friday introduced that he’s opening an investigation into Walz’s work associated to China, together with coordinating pupil journeys, and sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a swath of paperwork and any correspondence with Walz associated to China.
“People must be deeply involved that Governor Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential working mate, has a longstanding and comfy relationship with China. …The American folks deserve to totally perceive how deep Governor Walz’s relationship with China goes,” Comer mentioned in a press release.
Walz in 1989 went to China as a part of a teach-abroad program. He additionally helped coordinate journeys for college students and has visited China greater than 30 occasions — two particulars highlighted by Comer as a part of the groundwork for his investigation.
Walz’s work associated to China has grow to be an early level of GOP criticism because the social gathering recalibrates its November technique towards Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris. However Walz has additionally been essential of China, notably on human rights. Throughout his time in Congress he served on the Congressional-Government Fee on China, which focuses on the problem.
“All through his profession, Governor Walz has stood as much as the CCP, fought for human rights … and democracy, and all the time put American jobs and manufacturing first. Republicans are twisting primary details and desperately mendacity to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators, and sending American jobs to China,” Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz, mentioned in a press release.
A spokesperson for Oversight Committee Democrats in a press release known as Comer’s investigation “nothing greater than a political stunt to help the previous president, whereas he ignores Trump’s cozy relationships with dictators, together with China’s Xi.”
Comer has launched sweeping investigations into Chinese language entities as a part of his work as chair of the Home Oversight Committee, which has a broad jurisdictional lane. However he’s additionally used the panel to delve into the social gathering’s political opponents. Whereas he instructed POLITICO that he wouldn’t be calling Harris in, he recently requested documents related to her work on the U.S.-Mexico border.
His most high-profile investigation — co-leading an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden that largely targeted on the enterprise offers of his relations — has quietly wrapped after months. Republicans, nonetheless, don’t have the votes to question Biden, after investigators didn’t persuade dozens of their colleagues that Biden had dedicated against the law or an impeachable offense.
