Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz has for years embellished his military service in the National Guard, as reports based on statements from those who served with him have shown. There are also lingering questions about Walz’s long history of association with the Communist Party of China (CCP). Now there are new questions about the investment activities of Minnesota’s state pension fund under Walz’s leadership.
Peter Schweizer, host of The Drill Down podcast, and co-host Eric Eggers, review the “troubling questions” on the most recent episode.
“Tim Walz traveled to China extensively,” Schweizer says. “That’s no big deal in and of itself. He had a student exchange program where he brought American students to China. What’s concerning here is that program was actually funded by the Chinese. And of course, when you say it’s funded by the Chinese, it’s not some nonprofit. It’s the Chinese Communist Party that runs that,” he says.
“And some very interesting comments from some of the students that were involved in that program. There was a local media account, for example, where one of the students said that Walsh told the students to downplay their “Americanness,” when they were in China, which strikes me as odd.”
As Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute showed in the bestseller Blood Money, China’s “disintegration warfare” relies on capturing elites in the United States and intimidating Chinese nationals while they are in the US for school or as guest workers.
“In 2019, now as governor of Minnesota, he gives a speech to an organization that is a known [Chinese government] front group,” Schweizer continues. “When he had his inauguration in January of 2019 as governor, he actually invited Chinese diplomats to attend, which is odd and kind of strange.”
Schweizer and Eggers also note there are Chinese government offices in the US that they call “secret police stations,” whose purpose is to police and monitor the activities of Chinese citizens in the US. There are eight of them known to the FBI — one of them is located in Minneapolis.
But less attention has been paid to the state pension fund’s investments since Walz became governor and a board member of the fund. In the last three years alone, the state’s pension fund has invested more than $900 million of its pension fund in China, a figure that spiked up 70% since Walz became governor and at a time when other state investment funds have been divesting from China because of business conditions and China’s human rights abuses against its native Uyghur population.
Walz is not a wealthy man, so it does not appear he has tried to personally enrich himself through his connections to China, Schweizer notes. “So, the question comes down to motive. Why is he doing the things that he’s doing with regards to China if he’s not getting paid? … Is he a fellow traveler? Does he have a soft spot for China for that kind of collectivist approach?
“Walz criticized police brutality in America after the George Floyd riots, but not by China,” Schweizer says.
Regarding Walz’s National Guard service, Schweizer and Eggers wonder why he hasn’t simply said, “I made a mistake. I apologize,” and owned up to the misrepresentations he’s been making about it for twenty years.
“To me, it’s that he’s digging in his heels, that he does not want to address this issue. To me, it speaks to an issue of character. It also speaks to an issue of arrogance. Like he feels like he deserves this,” Schweizer says.
GAI is continuing to explore these stories for future episodes. “We’re going to stay on top of the story. We’re continuing to investigate lots of people on both sides of the aisle, and this is going to be important because Tim Walz has not been vetted and the media certainly is not going to do this work,” Schweizer says.
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