Campaign aides to former Vice President Kamala Harris quizzed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on whether he was an agent for the Chinese Communist Party before selecting him as her running mate, according to a report.
The intense vetting of Walz, which was reported by CNN, came about after Harris aides dug into the governor’s past, including the several trips he took to China before entering politics.
Walz’s China ties stem from his years as a teacher before entering politics.
He taught in China in the late 1980s shortly after the Tiananmen Square crackdown and later returned multiple times, leading student trips to the country over the years, according to accounts reviewed during the vetting process.
Those past visits, Harris aides said, prompted questions about whether he had ever acted on behalf of a foreign government, which Walz denied.
An aide for Harris, who became the Democratic Party’s de facto nominee after then-President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, also asked Josh Shapiro if he had ever been an “agent of the Israeli government” while vetting him as her possible No. 2, the Pennsylvania governor wrote in his memoir.
Shapiro, the charismatic 52-year-old who is Jewish, wrote in his upcoming memoir that he took offense to the suggestion that he may hold “dual loyalty” — an accusation that many consider to be antisemitic.
Dana Remus, a former White House counsel under Biden who was assigned to the vetting team by Harris, asked Shapiro in the summer of 2024: “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?”
“Was she kidding?” Shapiro wrote in his book, “Where We Keep the Light: Stories From a Life of Service.”
“I told her how offensive the question was.”
Shapiro wrote that he grew more agitated as Remus continued her line of questioning.
“Well, we have to ask,” Remus reportedly told the Pennsylvania governor. “We just wanted to check.”
She is then reported to have asked: “Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?”
“If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” Shapiro wrote in the memoir, an excerpt of which was obtained by CNN.
“I calmly answered her questions. Remus was just doing her job. I get it. But the fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question by someone else, said a lot about people around the VP.”
In his younger years, Shapiro spent time on an Israeli kibbutz and also volunteered on an Israeli army base.
Prominent Jewish figures including Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust expert who served as special envoy for antisemitism during the Biden administration, denounced the insinuations of dual loyalty.
Lipstadt said the questions posed to Shapiro were “classic antisemitism.”
Harris also pressed Shapiro during vetting about his outspoken denunciations of antisemitism on college campuses, including his public criticism of the University of Pennsylvania over its handling of anti-Israel protests, according to accounts of the process.
The questioning focused on whether his forceful stance could become a political flashpoint on the national stage, sources familiar with the vetting said, as the war in Gaza fueled tensions within the Democratic coalition.
Harris ultimately passed over Shapiro, a decision that came after a fraught vetting process and lingering tensions between the two camps.
In her own campaign account of the 2024 race, Harris suggested she worried Shapiro would struggle to accept a supporting role and could chafe as vice president — claims the Pennsylvania governor later angrily rejected through aides as “simply ridiculous.”
Instead, Harris selected Walz as her running mate, touting the Minnesota governor’s Midwestern roots, military service and ability to connect with working-class voters as assets on the ticket.
The pairing, however, failed to stop Donald Trump’s return to power, with Harris losing the general election by a large margin — a defeat that has since fueled renewed scrutiny of the rushed vetting process and the decisions that shaped the Democratic ticket.
The Post has sought comment from Remus, who is currently a partner at the powerhouse law firm Covington & Burling.
Reps for Harris, Shapiro and Walz were not immediately available for comment.
Shapiro’s memoir was published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, which shares common ownership with The Post. The book is due out on Jan. 27.
