(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, now Kamala Harris’s running mate, “embellished and selectively omitted facts of his military career for years,” according to National Guard members who served alongside him.
These allegations originated from a 2018 open letter posted on Facebook, coinciding with Walz’s initial gubernatorial campaign.
The letter, first reported by the Daily Wire on Tuesday, accused Walz of abandoning his unit when it was set to be deployed to Iraq.
Walz had previously served 20 years before re-enlisting for seven years in 2001 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was set to serve for seven years but only served four, retiring to run for Congress, where he would serve until becoming governor in 2018.
Retired Command Sergeants Major Thomas Behrends and Paul Herr alleged, “On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war.”
At the time, Walz claimed he was resigning to pursue a political career. Behrends and Herr retorted that Walz could have sought permission from the Department of Defense to run for public office.
“If he had retired normally and respectfully, you would think he would have ensured his retirement documents were correctly filled out and signed, and that he would have ensured he was reduced to Master Sergeant for dropping out of the academy,” the retired guardsmen wrote. “Instead he slithered out the door and waited for the paperwork to catch up to him.”
The letter also claimed Walz’s retirement documents were marked, “SOLDER NOT AVAILABLE FOR SIGNATURE” and highlighted his attempt to offer a fundraiser for his former battalion’s Christmas trip back home. “The same Soldiers he had abandoned just months before, trying to buy their votes,” Behrends and Herr stated.
On Nov. 3, 2006, Walz dismissed the accusations as falsehoods. These claims were originally raised by Tom Hagen, a Minnesota military reservist who served in Iraq, in a letter to the editor of The Winona Daily News.
Responding to Hagen’s allegations—12 years before they resurfaced—Walz stated, “After completing 20 years of service in 2001, I re-enlisted to serve our country for an additional four years following Sept. 11 and retired the year before my battalion was deployed to Iraq in order to run for Congress.”
He added, “I’m proud of the 24 years I served our country in the Army National Guard. There’s a code of honor among those who’ve served, and normally this type of partisan political attack comes only from one who’s never worn a uniform,” he added.
