Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has championed a group that partnered with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology — the organization at the center of the coronavirus lab leak theory — even pushing for more federal funding.
Over the years, Walz has promoted a group based in his state — the Hormel Institute — which has a history of teaming up with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to the Washington Examiner, “For over a decade, Walz has held meetings with the Hormel Institute and toured the research center, which has thanked Walz for securing it millions of dollars in funding, records show.” Further, he helped the institute accrue millions in funding during his time in Congress, pushing for millions more in federal funding for the organization as far back as 2008, per reports.
According to the Examiner, the organization been involved with the Wuhan Institute of Virology as well:
In recent years, researchers at the Hormel Institute have teamed up with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on a variety of projects, including in 2020 for a COVID-19 study and as recently as this year on structural biology research.
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In 2020, the Hormel Institute also disclosed in the “funding information” section of a separate EMBO Journal study that it received “help from the Core Facility and Technical Support” of the WIV for “radioactive and fluorescent tests,” the Washington Examiner found.
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Similarly, in January 2024, Hormel Institute researchers published a study on genes with the WIV’s Lina He, Wei Zhou, and Yangbo Hu. The WIV was used for “radioactive tests,” according to page 10 of the study.
WATCH — Sen. Marsha Blackburn: ‘I Am Just Livid’ With Dr. Fauci, Potential ‘Lab Leak’ of Coronavirus May Have Been ‘Intentional’ by China:
Further evidence of China ties for Walz, however, is not surprising, as he has a long history of courting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“The concerns are, look, you know, you can like China. You can like the Chinese people. The question is, when you set up an exchange program, as he did, to bring students to China, you’re not dealing with the Chinese people — you’re dealing with the Chinese Communist Party. And in the case of his program, it’s funded by the CCP. It was organized with the help of the CCP,” New York Times bestselling author and Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily in August, noting that Walz urged those students to tone down their “Americanness” when going to China.
Walz, who has been to China over two dozen times — even honeymooning there — has other odd connections. In 2019, for example, he delivered a speech for an organization which served as a front group for the CCP.
“And yet, in 2019 he goes and gives them a speech. … Whenever he talks about China, it’s with a lot of warmth. And whenever there are issues raised about its human rights situation, there’s always a well, you know, we have the same kind of thing. We have the same problems. You know, the most famous one he did in 2010 was talking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, when 10,000 people were killed by the Chinese military. And he said, ‘Well, you know, we had Wounded Knee.’ You know, of course, Wounded Knee was in the 19th century. Casualties were, you know, maybe one percent. It was a horrible situation. I’m not minimizing it, but to compare Wounded Knee with Tiananmen Square is kind of the ridiculous kind of comparisons that he tries to draw to sort of normalize CCP behavior,” Schweizer said, also revealing the “secret police stations that the Chinese have here in the United States” has one in the Twin Cities in Walz’s home state.
“And the organization that runs that secret police station is tied to a group called Minnesota Global, which is a Tim Walz organization,” he added.
All of this comes as the House Oversight Committee launches an investigation into Walz’s numerous connections to China following what they describe as “reports detailing the Governor’s longstanding connections to Chinese Communist Party entities and officials.”