Kamala Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz falsely claimed to be a “Command Sergeant Major” in the Minnesota Army National Guard while running for office in 2006, a newly surfaced video shows.
On March 20, 2005, Walz’s campaign put out a press release announcing that the Democrat was still running for Congress after the National Guard Public Affairs Office announced the deployment of 2,000 Minnesota National Guard troops to Iraq.
When asked about his possible deployment to Iraq, Walz at the time claimed that he didn’t know whether his artillery unit would be part of the mobilization, and declined to comment further on the specifics of deployment.
Walz had been “conditionally promoted” to Command Sergeant Major in September of 2004, but he quit the military in May 2005, soon after his artillery battalion received word that it would be deployed to Iraq.
On September 10th, 2005 Walz was reduced back to Master Sergeant.
In Walz’s 2006 campaign video, he also falsely claimed to have retired “four years late.” In reality, he quit two years early to run for Congress, abandoning his battalion before they deployed to Iraq.
Walz reenlisted in the Minnesota Army National Guard for six years on September 18th, 2001 and left in May of 2005.
Additionally, in 2009, then-congressman Walz sent a farewell message to some soldiers deploying to Iraq, repeating the false claim that he is a “retired Command Sergeant Major.”
The Harris campaign reportedly updated its online biography of Walz’s military service to reflect his actual record in the Army National Guard.
The campaign initially referred to Walz as a “retired command sergeant major” in the bio. That has been tweaked to say he once served at the command sergeant major rank, which is technically accurate.
Meanwhile, “Stolen Valor” accusations continue to dog the governor.
In 2008, the then-Minnesota congressman endorsed a book that falsely claimed he served in Afghanistan.
The book, “Winning Your Election the Wellstone Way: A Comprehensive Guide for Candidates and Campaign Workers,” by Jeff Blodgett, Bill Lofy, Ben Goldfarb, and Erik Peterson, sought to offer an “advanced strategy for running and winning a progressive campaign.”
More recently, Walz mischaracterized his military service while delivering remarks on gun control: “We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” the governor said.
But the Democrat never carried a weapon on the battlefield, as implied.
In late summer of 2003, First Sergeant Walz was deployed to Italy with the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Their mission was “to augment United States Air Force Europe Security Forces doing base security for six months,” retired Command Sergeants Major of the Minnesota National Guard noted in a paid letter to the editor of the Western Central Tribune.
“In no way were the units or Soldiers of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion replacing any units or military forces so they could deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan,” the retired sergeants said.
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