Worst Week Yet: Multiple Reports Highlight Herschel Walker’s Pattern Of Lies

This week, Walker’s lies were once again front and center following a series of new media reports highlighting his repeated false claims that he worked in law enforcement, his continued lies about his business career and educational record, his campaign advertisements on “a social media site popular with white nationalists,” and the depths of Walker’s hypocrisy around his personal history.

Read more about Walker’s terrible week below:

Herschel Walker said he worked in law enforcement — he didn’t

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/13/22

• In September 2019, Herschel Walker stood in front of an auditorium of soldiers in combat fatigues at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. 

• “I worked for law enforcement, y’all didn’t know that either?” he said. “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?”

• It wasn’t the first time Walker said he was in law enforcement, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found while reviewing dozens of speeches and motivational talks by Walker that were posted online.

• ”I work with the Cobb County Police Department, and I’ve been in criminal justice all my life,” he said in 2017.
• In 2000, he told Irving, Texas, police that he was “a certified peace officer,” according to a police report.

• And he has used his alleged law enforcement ties to justify why he has had a gun, including a 2001 incident when he pursued a man who was late delivering a car.

• “I worked in law enforcement, so I had a gun. I put this gun in my holster and I said, ‘I’m gonna kill this dude,’ ” he said at a 2013 suicide prevention event for the U.S. Army.

• The claims, which appear to have halted since he entered the U.S. Senate race, aren’t true.

• The Cobb County Police Department said it had no record of involvement with Walker. The Cobb Sheriff’s Office could not say whether he was an honorary deputy.

• But former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan said even if he was, that doesn’t mean a lot.

• ”It gives you absolutely no law enforcement authority,” he said. “It’s like a junior ranger badge.”

• Morgan said that many sheriffs in Georgia stopped handing out such honors amid fears that people would use the paperwork to impersonate police officers, a felony in Georgia.

• Walker is not an agent — that would require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree and Walker left UGA before earning his degree. 

• The FBI did not respond when asked to verify the account.

The Last Thing: Herschel Walker’s Lies

MSNBC, 6/15/22

• The last thing before we go tonight: Herschel Walker’s lies. 

• Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker said there that he wants to be a leader like Trump. Well, with his climbing number of lies, he’s getting a lot closer to that goal. 

• The latest is that he said on at least three separate occasions that he worked in law enforcement. Well, for fact’s sake, let’s clear things up. 

• According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in a 2017 speech, Walker said this: “I work with the Cobb County Police Department and I’ve been in criminal justice all my life,”  

• And two years later while giving a speech to soldiers he said, “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?”

• They didn’t know, because he wasn’t.

• And according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Cobb County Police Department said they have no record of any involvement with Walker. 

• And as we said, that is just the latest of Walker’s lies that have recently come to light. He also claimed that he owned companies, companies that don’t actually exist. He lied about his college achievements, and in 2020 falsely claims that he knew of a mist that prevented COVID.

As Herschel Walker’s GOP profile rises, the falsehoods mount

Washington Post, 6/14/22

• During the course of Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign… [he] has also faced blowback from critics and Democrats for false claims he made before and during his candidacy that have surfaced in recent months — from his college education and business background to his questioning of evolution and promoting a “mist” he said would “kill any covid on your body.”
   
• The latest came Monday when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on previous speeches and statements given by Walker about how he claimed in 2017 that he had worked with police in Cobb County, Ga. Two years later, Walker mentioned he was an FBI agent.
   
• “I worked for law enforcement, y’all didn’t know that either?” he said in 2019. “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?”
   
• In reality, he had not. A spokesman for the Cobb County Police Department told the Journal-Constitution, and later confirmed to The Washington Post, that it has no record of working with Walker.
   
• In December, Walker’s campaign deleted a false claim that he had graduated from college.
   
• Walker later denied that he made the false claim about his graduation status in an interview with WAGA in Atlanta — delivering a false claim in response to a false claim.
   
• “I never, I never have said that statement,” he said. “Not one time.”
   
• In January, the Daily Beast unearthed a 2020 podcast appearance from Walker, in which he promoted a “mist” that he falsely claimed would “kill any covid on your body,” even though there is no known mist or spray that can prevent covid-19.
   
• In March, Walker questioned evolution during an address at a Georgia church, asking why apes still exist if humans have evolved from them.
   
• Then, in early April, CNN reported on how Walker had been overstating his academic achievements for years. In addition to his false claim surrounding his graduation, Walker asserted at least twice in 2017 that he was his high school’s valedictorian and graduated “in the top 1 percent” at Georgia.
   
• There is no evidence that Walker was valedictorian, and the reference was eventually removed from his campaign site.

• “Every report and every scandal that emerges about Herschel Walker reinforces that he is not who he says he is, is not ready to represent the people of Georgia, and cannot be trusted to serve Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia.

• Critics have also questioned claims surrounding his business background.
   
• Months after the AP reported on how Walker’s business records showed “exaggerated claims of financial success” and a history of alarming associates with “unpredictable behavior,” Walker made false claims regarding the earnings and size of his chicken business, Renaissance Man Food Services, according to the Daily Beast.

The Strange Tale of Herschel Walker and the Chicken Empire That Wasn’t

New York Times, 6/14/22

• Walker has made his record as an entrepreneur central to his biographical narrative, describing himself as the “successful owner” of as many as a dozen businesses.

• But Walker’s origin story about his food-services company fits a pattern of exaggerations, half-truths and outright falsehoods that dates back to at least the 1990s.

• A 1996 profile of Walker in Sports Illustrated by the columnist Skip Bayless called his statements “a wacky maze of contradictions” and portrayed Walker as setting himself up to fall short of the “superhuman” expectations he publicly set for himself.
  
• Many aspects of Walker’s biography, however, have collapsed under closer scrutiny. On Monday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Walker has repeatedly claimed he “worked in law enforcement,” when in fact he hasn’t.

• Walker has even lied about graduating from college, which he did not do, then lied about whether he lied about graduating from college, as CNN found he did. He also has layered on further embellishment at times, claiming that he graduated “in the top 1 percent of my graduating class,” which he did not.
  
• On Tuesday, Walker publicly acknowledged having fathered a second son with whom he is not in contact after a report by The Daily Beast, which said it had confirmed the 10-year-old boy’s parentage.

• In an interview with Fox Business in 2018, Walker said that Renaissance Man Food Services was “the largest minority-owned chicken business in the United States,” which was not true.

• He also said it was “essentially a mini Tyson Foods” with “over 600 employees.” Two years later, in an interview with Scott Murray, a sports broadcaster in Dallas, Walker said the company had “about 800 employees.”

• But in April 2020, Renaissance Man Food Services listed just eight employees on a loan application for the Paycheck Protection Program, the coronavirus-era relief program.

• Renaissance Man Food Services did not own the chicken-processing plants Walker has claimed it owned, either. As he told the court in a deposition for a wrongful termination suit that was previously examined by The Associated Press, “I don’t mean to speak of ‘own’ in a technical sense.”

• Asked for the same deposition if he had come up with the name of his company on his own, Walker responded, “Yes, I’m the Renaissance Man.” But when pressed about the name’s origins, he said, “I have no clue where it came from.”

Herschel Walker is advertising on social media site popular with white nationalists

The American Independent, 6/14/22

• The campaign of Republican Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker has been running ads on Gab, a social media site popular with white nationalists. Meanwhile, Walker has recently called for more federal monitoring of social media as a solution to mass shootings.

• According to a May report by the progressive media monitoring group Media Matters for America, Walker is one of several Republican politicians who have been advertising on Gab. 

• Gab bills itself as “a social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online.” With little content moderation, its user base includes white supremacists, white Christian nationalists, and other far-right extremists. In December 2021, the Anti-Defamation League noted that the company had posted antisemitic tropes and that CEO Andrew Torba had “engaged in multiple antisemitic tirades”: “Torba himself posted that ‘Zionists’ (in this case a clear reference for Jews) are responsible for creating the Federal Reserve and for the ‘subversion of American Christianity.'”

• A Washington Post profile noted that Robert Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 people in a mass shooting on Oct. 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was a frequent user of Gab. His profile included the words “jews are the children of satan.”

• After another apparent right-wing domestic terrorist attack in Buffalo, New York, and a deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May, Walker has struggled to articulate his position on addressing gun violence.

• In the past, he has faced accusations of domestic abuse, including threatening his ex-wife with knives and guns. He has denied breaking the law, but said he is “accountable” for the alleged actions.

• Asked on May 24 by CNN if he would support any new gun violence legislation in light of the Texas massacre, Walker answered, “What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff. I like to see it,” and walked off.

• Two days later, he told Fox News, “What about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at social media. What about doing that, looking into things like that,  and we can stop that that way. But yet they want to just continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights. And I think there are more things you need to look into.”

• A Walker campaign spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry for this story.

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Monday that Walker, who has already come under fire for lying about and exaggerating his accomplishments and his record, has repeatedly said he “worked in law enforcement,” and telling an audience of soldiers in 2019, “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?” The AJC reported that there are no records of Walker serving in either.

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