CNN reported Monday that Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign vetting team didn’t just scrutinize Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) for potential foreign ties — they also questioned Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) about his extensive history of travel in China.
According to CNN, the vetting team pressed Walz on whether he had ever been an “agent of China,” citing “four sources familiar with the matter.”
Walz’s long-running interest in China, the report said, included multiple visits over the years — so many that the exact number became a point of debate. Walz said in 2016 that he had been to China “dozens” of times, while his team later suggested in 2024 that the number was “closer to 15 times.”
Walz has said he first traveled to China in 1989, around the time of the Tiananmen Square uprising. He later honeymooned there and went on to establish a company that took students on organized trips to the country.
Those past trips, CNN reported, were enough for the Harris vetting team to raise the question of whether he could be a Chinese spy. Harris ultimately selected Walz as her Democratic running mate in her unsuccessful bid against President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
The CNN report landed just after Shapiro revealed he was offended by being asked during the vetting process whether he was a “double agent” for Israel.
Shapiro described the experience in an excerpt from his memoir, Where We Keep the Light, published by The New York Times on Sunday.
At the time, Shapiro was viewed as one of the top contenders to join the Harris ticket after she replaced former President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
After Harris passed him over, multiple pundits — including CNN host Jake Tapper — publicly questioned whether Shapiro’s Jewish identity played a role. Shapiro’s vocal support for Israel following the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023 was also seen by some observers as a possible complication with progressive voters.
Harris, meanwhile, criticized Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack. During a book tour in November, she told anti-Israel protesters:
Let’s be very clear, that the inhuman nature of what has happened to the Palestinian people in Gaza, the innocent civilians, the extent of hunger, famine, suffering, death, is something that we must acknowledge.
The Times also reported that Shapiro was “pressed” on other Israel-related issues.
“I wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” Shapiro wrote in his book.
Walz is now facing political blowback in Minnesota tied to what has been described as a $9 billion “industrial-scale” fraud scheme that has roiled the state.
