Rep. James Comer (R-KY), House Oversight Committee chairman, is expanding his investigation into Gov. Tim Walz‘s (D-MN) ties to China, citing a recent Washington Examiner report on Walz promoting a China-linked research institute.
In a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Comer raised concerns over Walz’s promotion, as Minnesota’s governor, of a group called the Hormel Institute, which the Washington Examiner reported in September partners with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The top Republican is re-upping his request from August for the agency to turn over any documents on Chinese entities Walz has reportedly been linked to over the years.
“Recent reports indicate Mr. Walz, while in Congress, ‘helped secure over $2 million’ and ‘pushed for a $5 million federal earmark’ for the Hormel Institute, which is a ‘Minnesota-based medical research center with a history of working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China,’” Comer wrote in the letter to Wray. “The Wuhan Institute of Virology is closely connected to the CCP and has been implicated in the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Comer’s letter also cited a report from Fox News detailing the Hormel Institute’s track record of collaborating with the Beijing Genomics Institute, which the Pentagon labeled a “Chinese military company” earlier this year. The Hormel Institute’s parent, the University of Minnesota, denied in a recent statement to the Washington Examiner that the institute has a “formal affiliation” with the WIV or the Beijing Genomics Institute.
However, journal records show that researchers from the Hormel Institute work on projects with personnel from the WIV and the Beijing Genomics Institute.
