Republicans are scrutinizing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s military record by honing in on previous claims he made implying he engaged in battle during his service in the Army National Guard.
Mr. Walz, who was selected to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate earlier this week, ended his 24-year military career to run for Congress in 2005, right before his battalion deployed to Iraq.
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, do you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him — a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with,” said Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee and a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, Wednesday to reporters in Michigan.
“I think it’s shameful to prepare your unit to go to Iraq, to make a promise that you’re going to follow through, and then to drop out right before you actually have to go,” Mr. Vance said.
In a post on X on Tuesday that showed Mr. Walz’s hunting and military background, the Harris campaign released an undated video of him talking about gun control.
“We can do CDC research. We can make sure we don’t have reciprocal carry among states,” he said in the clip. “And we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”
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The Harris camp on Thursday, though, appeared to clean up Mr. Walz’s past remarks about being “in war.”
“In his 24 years of service, the governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Gov. Walz would never insult or undermine any American service to this country,” the campaign said.
The Harris campaign’s website eliminated the reference to Mr. Walz as a “retired command sergeant major.” It now says that he once served at the command sergeant major rank.
He retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, himself a veteran, said Mr. Walz “served honorably and well” and that the GOP criticisms are “strategic.”
“Team Trump needs us tied up in debates over pre-retirement conditional rank promotions because they are desperate NOT to discuss their (unpopular) policies, like tax cuts for the rich and banning access to abortion,” he posted on X.
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But allegations of stolen valor by men who served with Mr. Walz in the National Guard go back to when he first ran for Congress and later governor. They claim he embellished his military service to benefit his political career.
Thomas Behrends, a retired command sergeant major of the Minnesota National Guard, said to Alpha News during Mr. Walz’s first run for governor in 2018 that “Tim Walz has embellished and selectively omitted facts and circumstances of his military career for years.”
A press release from 2005 shows Mr. Walz’s battalion received a warning order to ready themselves to be moved out for a deployment to Iraq in early 2005.
According to Mr. Behrends, on May 16, 2005, Mr. Walz retired, leaving his battalion without a key leader as they prepared to go into combat.
Ultimately, Mr. Behrends replaced Mr. Walz in his post after his departure, and the battalion was deployed to Iraq for more than 22 months between 2006 and 2007.
Mr. Walz would have been issued and trained on an M-16 rifle during his tenure in the National Guard, but according to his service record, saying he carried it in war is inaccurate.
The Minnesota National Guard confirms Mr. Walz’s battalion deployed in 2003 to support Operation Enduring Freedom, but that he was stationed in Vicenza, Italy, and never saw combat. He returned to Minnesota in April 2004.
In a recently unearthed video from 2009, Iraq War veteran David Thul, who was also a sergeant in the Minnesota National Guard, confronted a then-aide of Mr. Walz at his congressional district office in Mankato, Minnesota. He asked why Mr. Walz was misleading the public about his military service during “Operation Enduring Freedom.”
“Operation Enduring Freedom is limited to Afghanistan and the airspace directly above,” Mr. Thul told the staffer.” Congressman Walz is clearly claiming … to be an Enduring Freedom veteran.”
After Mr. Walz retired from the military in 2005, his artillery unit was deployed to Iraq and faced heavy combat. Some of those he served with say Mr. Walz abandoned his unit by retiring when there was talk they could be deployed.
“People are mad because we all did what we were supposed to do. We did the right thing, and it’s dishonorable,” Tom Schilling, a retired Minnesota National Guardsman who served with Mr. Walz, told Fox News. “What he did was he left somebody else to take over his spot. He just ditched us.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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