U.S. Rep. Jim Banks is raising concerns about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s dozens of trips to China and his “concerning affinity” for the communist nation.
Walz, who was selected last week as Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, said in a 2016 interview that he has traveled to China “about 30 times” as a teacher and member of Congress. That included a 1994 trip that doubled as his honeymoon, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that Walz “planned his wedding date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown on June 4.”
His first trip to China took place in 1989 as part of the WorldTeach program and he went on to lead students on trips to the country, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“One of the things we’ve been focusing on—and I lived in China and as I’ve said, I’ve been there about 30 times, but if someone tells you they’re an expert on China, they’re probably not telling you the truth because it’s a complex country” Walz said in a 2016 interview with Agri-Pulse Communications.
“I don’t fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship,” added Walz, who did note that China needs to “play by the rules” from an “environmental, from a fair trade, and also from a human rights perspective.”
During Walz’s trips to China throughout the ‘90s and early 2000s, he “remained a service member in either the Nebraska or Minnesota National Guards and presumably held a clearance for much or all of this time,” Banks said in a letter this week to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, according to a copy obtained by Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics.
New: @Jim_Banks sends letter to Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin questioning how @Tim_Walz, “a senior enlisted guardsman, presumably with a Secret security clearance,” travelled “to China regularly on unofficial business without raising red flags?”
Letter: pic.twitter.com/WEW5RMF9lP
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) August 13, 2024
According to Banks, the “vast majority of senior enlisted service members in the Army and Army National Guard receive a Secret level security clearance as part of their duties.” Walz “almost certainly” received such a clearance, Banks said, noting that security clearance holders are required to report their foreign travel plans ahead of time and are often expected to undergo “threat briefings for foreign travel to prepare them for the risks of hostile foreign intelligence activity.”
Banks observed that the Chinese Communist Party can exploit “naive foreign visitors, particularly visitors who are military servicemembers.”
“Walz bragged after one trip to China that ‘they gave me more gifts than I could bring home’ and that ‘I will never be treated that well again.’ 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,” said Banks, a Republican from Indiana.
“I am therefore concerned that Governor Walz may have failed to comply with foreign travel reporting requirements during these trips to China, despite his duty as a security clearance holder to protect our national security.”
Banks is far from the only politician to raise questions about Walz’s affinity for China. U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said: “Tim Walz owes the American people an explanation about his unusual, 35-year relationship with Communist China.”
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
