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Republicans and right-wing media are escalating a baseless conspiracy theory that Tim Walz is covertly working for China, twisting his teaching experience in the country and his subsequent visits as alleged evidence of a Chinese effort to “groom” him to have a “foothold” in the US government.

After launching flailing investigations into Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, House Republicans have suggested opening yet another probe to target Harris’s running mate.

Donald Trump’s campaign, his Republican allies and right-wing media outlets have sought to undermine Walz’s military service and the fertility treatments that his wife used to become pregnant with their children.

Now, GOP lawmakers are pressing federal authorities for documents and testimony as media figures drum up baseless speculation about Walz’s career in education to attack Harris’s campaign.

James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, wrote to FBI director Chriostopher Wray alleging Walz’s “longstanding connections” to the Chinese Communist Party “that make him susceptible to the Party’s strategy of elite capture, which seeks to co-opt influential figures in elite political, cultural, and academic circles to influence the United States to the benefit of the communist regime and the detriment of Americans.”

“If you look at Walz’s background, and you look at the things he talked about … this is a guy who has really embraced China’s view of the world, the Chinese ideology, which is communism,” Comer told Fox News on Monday.

“It’s very possible that China would be grooming an up and coming rising star in the political process to try to have a foothold in our government,” Comer said.

Senator Ron Johnson, who was described by The New York Times as the GOP’s “foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation” in 2021, baselessly asserted that Walz has “deep connections to China.”

“The House is going to investigate it now,” he told Fox News this week. “It’s very strange. He got married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. He’s gone to China. He’s taught in China. He’s got deep connections to China.”

Walz taught English and American history in China through Harvard University’s WorldTeach program in the late 1980s when he was 25. He later started a program called Educational Travel Adventures with his wife Gwen Walz, who is also a teacher, to organize summer trips to China for American high school students.

Walz was one of the “first government sanctioned groups of American educators” in China after the country opened its doors to the world in the 1980s.

He was in China during pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

“It was my belief at that time that diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people,” Walz said during a congressional hearing commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests in 2014. “The opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.”

He did marry Gwen Walz on the Tiananmen Square anniversary on June 4, 1994, and he spent their honeymoon in China with 60 students as part of a class trip.

Before he was elected to Congress in 2006, Walz was a global geography teacher at Mankato West High School in Minnesota, where his students encouraged him to campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives.

While in Congress, Walz served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and his time in and out of office has largely sided with human rights issues and political moves in opposition to President Xi Jinping’s regime.

In 2010, Walz co-sponsored a House motion condemning the arrest of activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo and activist Huang Qi. He also supported the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which demanded an end to human rights abuses in the former British colony.

Walz also met the Dalai Lama and has supported calls for religious freedoms in Tibet, condemned Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, and blasted China’s allied relationship with Russia in its war in Ukraine.

“Throughout his career, Governor Walz has stood up to the CCP, fought for human rights rights and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first,” according to a statement from Walz spokesperson Teddy Tschann.

“Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators, and sending American jobs to China,” he added. “Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will ensure we win the competition with China, and will always stand up for our values and interests in the face of China’s threats.”

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have blasted Comer’s latest comments as “nothing more than a political stunt.”

“For the umpteenth time, Chairman Comer shows the American people that his only real priority in Congress is doing Donald Trump’s bidding,” a spokesperson said.