'China is happy:’ New memos expose Homeland Security’s concerns about Tim Walz CCP connections

Newly released internal memos confirm the Department of Homeland Security and FBI had longstanding concerns about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his connections to the Chinese Communist Party, especially after he was selected by Vice President Kamala Harris as her presidential running mate last year. 

Homeland Security turned over the documents to watchdog group Judicial Watch, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and sued the government earlier this year, seeking communications in an agency group chat that allegedly referenced the probe into Walz. The existence of those messages was shared with the House Oversight Committee last year by whistleblowers, but the Biden-era DHS resisted turning over responsive documents. 

“China is happy,” one Homeland Security employee wrote in an explosive message to the group chat called “NST NFT Bi-Weekly Sync” on August 7, 2024, one day after Harris announced Walz as her running mate, the memos show. The employee linked a BBC News article detailing Chinese internet reactions to the choice, which were reported as largely positive. 

In response, another employee, whose name is also redacted, suggested looping in the FBI due to its responsibility for domestic counterintelligence, the messages show. 

“[W]ith FBI mission in the CI field i [sic] believe they need to get included,” the employee wrote. 

Though it is unclear what roles the employees in the group had in the department at the time, the messages show the group constituted a team of investigators primarily concerned with monitoring “subnational engagement” by the Chinese with American officials.

The documents provide the clearest evidence yet of the alarm bells sounding in U.S. government counterintelligence circles about the Minnesota governor’s selection to be Harris’s running mate. Those concerns stemmed from Walz’s longstanding ties to China and favorable interactions with its governing Communist Party dating back years.

You can read the communications below: 

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, praised Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for making the documents public in the lawsuit after the Biden-era agency stonewalled requests from Congress for the communications. 

“This is every bit as important as the Russiagate disclosures. The Biden gang obviously covered this all up to try to help rig the election,” he told Just the News in a statement on Monday.

Governor Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. 

Last year, the House Oversight Committee launched a probe into Walz and his relationship with the CCP after learning from whistleblowers that investigators had “serious concern” about the governor's visits to China and interactions with Chinese officials over several years. However, the Biden administration, including Homeland Security and the FBI, was reluctant to turn over responsive documents. 

Oversight Chairman James Comer subpoenaed Homeland Security last September as part of his committee’s ongoing probe into CCP influence in the United States and just months before the presidential election.

“The Committee’s investigation of the CCP – begun long before Governor Walz was elevated to be the vice-presidential candidate for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris – seeks to understand the extent of the CCP’s infiltration and influence campaign and to identify legislative reforms to combat CCP political warfare targeting prominent Americans for elite capture,” Comer wrote in the subpoena cover letter. 

“In particular, if 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 continued.

When the department resisted, Comer released a small portion of the communications, providing the first look into the internal agency discussions. 

“Walt’s [sic] got the Vp. You all have no idea how this feeds into what the prc [China] has been doing here with him and local gov,” the unidentified official wrote, Just the News previously reported. “It’s seriously a line of intel. Target someone who is perceived they can get to DC.”

This message is also part of the 47-page batch provided to Judicial Watch this month, the FOIA production shows. 

The new memos also appear to confirm that the FBI was also looking into Walz’s China connections, making it the second government agency to raise concerns. “Good to know and yes there involvement [sic] with HSI and fbi on things here,” one employee wrote in the group chat. 

The Oversight Committee also sought information from the FBI about any information the bureau had developed on Walz’s trips to China and interactions with CCP-affiliated groups. The committee specifically wanted to know whether Walz received any warnings from the FBI about Chinese influence operations, Just the News previously reported. 

During the presidential campaign, Walz faced scrutiny from Republicans for his history with China dating back to his stint as an English teacher in 1989, just months after the Chinese government cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Walz was also unable to answer whether he was in Hong Kong at the time of the protests as he originally claimed.

By the 1990s Walz’s experience with the communist-run country deepened. As a high school teacher in Nebraska, Walz began organizing regular trips to China for his high school students. Walz reportedly took about 30 trips total beginning in 1993. The costs were covered in part by the Chinese government, according to reports cited by the Oversight Committee. 

In addition to the numerous trips to China with his students, Walz also welcomed a delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials to his classroom in Nebraska when he was a teacher there, the Daily Caller reported. He has also reportedly praised the Chinese communist system, saying “everyone is the same and everyone shares” in China.

Before organizing the student trips, Walz spoke approvingly of the Chinese system, including the equality of workers and provision of basic needs by the state.

“It means that everyone is the same and everyone shares,” Walz told the Alliance Times-Herald newspaper in Nebraska. “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.”

Recently, Walz has continued to express pro-China sentiments. In the wake of Israel’s bombing attack on Iran earlier this year, the governor and former vice presidential candidate suggested that only China might have the “moral authority” to negotiate a peace agreement between the two countries.

“Who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this? Who holds the moral authority, who holds the ability to do that? Because we are not seen as a neutral actor and we maybe never were,” Walz told ex-Biden advisor Neera Tanden at a Center for American Progress event. 

He later suggested, “It might be the Chinese.”