Tim Walz has links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to records obtained by The Washington Examiner.
Kamala Harris’s vice-president pick has long-standing ties with the Hormel Institute, a medical-research facility based at the University of Minnesota that collaborates with the Chinese institute at the center of the controversy surrounding the origins of COVID-19.
As a Congressman, Walz helped secure over $2 million in funding for the Hormel Institute’s technology acquisitions and was a “strong advocate for The Hormel Institute, including by supporting its major expansions,” the Minnesota-based group said in April of this year.
Walz has offered fulsome praise for the Hormel Institute, which he has personally visited, saying that it “has helped pave the way for Minnesota to lead in biomedical innovation” and “fits with where we see ourselves as a state [in the future],” with its emphasis on “green energy, sustainable agriculture, and the ability to feed a very hungry world.”
The Hormel Institute has collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on a number of different projects, including multiple COVID-19 studies, and it has received help from its Chinese counterpart. A professor at the Hormel Institute also attended Wuhan University and worked with scientists from the Wuhan Institute on a scientific paper in 2020.
In a statement to The Washington Examiner, University of Minnesota spokesman Jake Ricker stated the university and the Hormel Institute have no “formal affiliation” with the WIV or Beijing Genomics Institute.
“Our discoveries are peer-reviewed and published in the public domain with appropriate attribution to those who contributed to each study,” Ricker said.
“Research is conducted with the full commitment of the Hormel Institute and the university to compliance with federal disclosure, security, export controls, and sanctions rules.”
Tim Walz has faced increasing scrutiny over his extensive ties to China. One former student described Walz, who has travelled to China more than 30 times, as “Maoist to the core.”
James Comer, who leads the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, recently announced an investigation into Walz’s links to the CCP with a press release and a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“The CCP has sought to destroy the United States through coordinated influence and infiltration campaigns that target every aspect of American life, including our own elected officials,” Comer said in the press release.
“Americans should be deeply concerned that Governor Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential running mate, has a longstanding and cozy relationship with China. Mr. Walz has visited China dozens of times, served as a fellow at a Chinese institution that maintains a devotion to the CCP, and spoke alongside the President of a Chinese organization the State Department exposed as a CCP effort to influence and co-opt local leaders. FBI briefers recently informed the Committee that the Bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force investigates CCP activity that is similar to China’s engagement with Governor Walz. The American people deserve to fully understand how deep Governor Walz’s relationship with China goes.”
The press release goes on to detail how Walz began organizing school trips to China, funded by the CCP, in the early 1990s, and then set up a private company which organized annual trips to China, until being dissolved days before Walz entered Congress in 2007. Walz has visited China an estimated 30 times, and held various positions of influence with regard to US-China relations.
In his letter to FBI Director Wray, Comer asks for a variety of documents and information relating to Walz’s activities in and with regard to China, including about Chinese individuals and organizations and any warnings or guidance issued to Governor Walz about “subnational government officials engaging with the PRC, CCP, and the CCP’s proxies.”