GOP puts Hunter Biden on hold, pivots to pressure Harris-Walz investigations as election ramps up

As election day is just two months away, House Republicans will shift their focus away from investigating first son Hunter Biden and instead investigate Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz. 

House Republicans have already launched probes into Minnesota Democratic Gov. Walz and in the coming days, Harris is expected to be investigated by the House. 

Next week when Congress is back in session, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing titled “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspectives," about Harris's role in the crisis at the southern border, according to Punchbowl News. The hearing is as of now scheduled to be livestreamed on YouTube. 

Republicans have been very critical of Harris and how she has handled the immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border with thousands of people coming across. Once called the "border czar" by the Biden administration and friendly media, almost immediately after President Biden was forced out of the race Harris and her surrogates quickly denied any such responsibilities, trying to put as much distance between herself and responibility for the border crisis. 

The House Oversight Committee during President Joe Biden's time in office has launched numerous probes and investigations into first son Hunter Biden for allegedly being involved in his father's overseas business deals and profiting from his family. Biden pleaded guilty to criminal tax charges this week,

But with the election coming up, House Republicans have shifted their focus to Harris and Walz. 

Walz, China and the Wuhan lab

Last month, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Walz over alleged connections to Chinese Communist Party officials. 

"Mr. Walz has visited China 30 times, served as a fellow at a Chinese institution that maintains a devotion to the CCP, and spoke alongside the President of a Chinese organization the State Department exposed as a CCP effort to influence and co-opt local leaders," the committee wrote on the social media platform, X.

The Washington Examiner reported yesterday that Walz "long promoted a Minnesota-based medical research center with a history of working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China." After repeated denials by the Biden-Harris administration and the NIH's Dr, Anthony Fauci, the FBI eventually determined that the Wuhan lab was the likely source of the COVID-19 virus. 

As a congressman, Walz helped secure over $2 million for the Hormel Institute and was a “strong advocate for The Hormel Institute," the Minnesota-based group said in April of this year. 

Dr. Zigang Dong, executive director of the Wald-backed Hormel Institute, abruptly stepped down from his post leading the institute in 2019 after 18 years in the position. Around the same time, it was revealed Dong was involved in an FBI probe where the bureau was investigating his "possible failure to report foreign backing when applying for grants," the Austin Daily Herald reported. 

Brian Cavanaugh, a former White House National Security Council member, said that the Hormel Institute’s work with the Wuhan lab is "concerning," and that “The Wuhan Institute of Virology has direct ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army,” Cavanaugh told the Washington Examiner. “The Hormel Institute is helping a foreign adversary.”

Reuters previously reported that the Walz-backed Hormel Institute is linked to a Chinese military-backed company called Beijing Genomics Institute, which in turn Reuters reported was added to a list by the U.S. Department of Defense of firms it says are allegedly working with Beijing's military.

Fraud in COVID-19 recovery funds?

The House Education and Workforce Committee recently subpoenaed Walz as part of an investigation into an purported Minnesota-based COVID-19 fraud scheme that dates back to 2020. Over the past three years, the Justice Department’s COVID-19 Enforcement Task Force has charged more than 3,500 people with federal crimes, recovered more than $1.4 billion in stolen pandemic funds and reached more than 400 civil settlements and judgments.

The subpoenas requested Walz to produce documents related to the oversight of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, five employees of which were found guilty in June on charges ranging from wire fraud; conspiracy to commit wire fraud; conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery; federal programs bribery; money laundering; making false statements in a passport application; and conspiracy to commit money laundering. which has been charged on 41 federal counts including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering in connection with the matter.

This week, Ladan Mohamed Ali, a Seattle woman who dropped off $120,000 for a juror in the Feeding Our Future trial pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in a bribery attempt, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The group said it gave away 18.8 million meals to needy children across the state. However, prosecutors said the group fabricated invoices and submitted thousands of fake names of children to defraud the government of $49 million in federal funds.

"There’s not a single state employee that was implicated in doing anything that was illegal," Walz told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should have.” A spokesperson for the Harris campaign called these probes "false attacks."

“Donald Trump and his extreme MAGA allies in the House are launching pathetic, false attacks on the Vice President and Governor Walz because they cannot win on their own records of taking away Americans’ freedoms and putting billionaires and corporations ahead of hard-working families,” said Harris spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg, according to Punchbowl.