Assessing Claims About Tim Walz and ‘Stolen Valor’

Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect new statements from the Harris-Walz campaign and to include a statement from the National Guard.

Vice President Kamala Harris has tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate for November’s presidential election. Walz’s profile soared since Harris’ announcement on Tuesday, placing him in the national spotlight for the first time in his career. The governor’s progressive reputation and folksy Midwestern demeanor have earned him plaudits from Democratic voters, but his record is also now under the microscope of conservative critics.

Walz has faced particularly heavy criticism this week for his military record. During a press conference in Michigan on Wednesday, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance accused Walz—who served in various National Guard units for more than 24 years—of misrepresenting his time in the military and abandoning his unit before a deployment. “What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage,” Vance said. “Do not pretend to be something that you’re not … I’d be ashamed if I were him and lied about my military service like he did.”

Walz retired from the National Guard in May 2005, only two months before his unit received alert orders that it would deploy to Iraq. Critics, including Vance, have argued that Walz knew of the deployment and pursued a quick retirement to get out of his obligation to serve.

Walz has also been accused of falsely implying that he served in Afghanistan and experienced combat. Prior campaigns have identified Walz as a “veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom,” and Walz himself has stated that he carried “weapons of war” in “war,” but critics highlight that Walz never deployed to a war zone during his 24 years of service.

Finally, Walz’s rank at retirement is also under question. While Walz claims to have served as a command sergeant major in the Minnesota National Guard, critics say he was actually demoted to a lesser rank and cannot claim the higher title.

Media reports this week have been filled with contradicting reports and unknown information on Walz’s record, and some facts about his service remain unclear. Here is an overview of what we do—and don’t—know about Walz’s time in the National Guard and the claims against him.

Claim: Walz ‘deserted’ his unit when it was sent to Iraq.

Vance’s main claim against Walz is that he chose to retire from the National Guard only after learning in 2005 that his battalion would be deployed to Iraq.

“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him—a fact he’s been criticized for aggressively by many of the people he served with,” Vance said during the Michigan press conference earlier this week. “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.”

Chris LaCivita—senior adviser to the Trump campaign who served in the Marines—levied similar criticism, claiming that Walz “deserted” his men.

Walz faced similar criticism after entering Congress in 2006, and again in 2018 during his campaign to be governor. In November 2018, two retired command sergeant majors in the Minnesota National Guard notably accused Walz in a letter of quitting not because he wanted to run for Congress, but because he did not want to fulfill his duties and deploy to Iraq.

We cannot say for certain when and why Walz decided to retire. Walz first enlisted in the Nebraska National Guard in April 1981, shortly after his 17th birthday, and transferred to the Minnesota National Guard in 1996. In 2001, Walz reenlisted for an additional 6 years according to Army documents, before officially leaving the service in May 2005.

In July 2005, two months after Walz’s retirement, the Minnesota National Guard was alerted that members would be deployed to Iraq. An official mobilization order was made in August 2005. The deployment had been rumored since at least March 2005, however, when the National Guard Public Affairs office announced that a partial mobilization of the Minnesota National Guard could occur in the following two years. At the time, Walz—who filed initial paperwork for a congressional run in February 2005—remarked that he did not know whether his unit would be part of the mobilization, but emphasized that he still planned to run for Congress. “I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race,” Walz said.

Walz has not revealed publicly when he made the decision to retire or began the retirement process, but he has indicated that it was to concentrate on his congressional campaign. “I decided to retire and focus full time on running for this office,” he said in a 2009 interview with the Veterans History Project. The retirement process for most military members, including National Guardsmen, takes multiple months—even years—to complete. As of July 2024, the National Guard recommended that service members begin planning for retirement 24 to 36 months before their intended retirement date, and it typically takes 90 days for retirement requests to be processed according to the Washington Post. A similar timeline would suggest that Walz was considering retiring before rumors emerged that his unit would deploy to Iraq. However, he could have made the final decision after learning that his unit might deploy. 

Claim: Walz lied about serving in combat.

Another “stolen valor” accusation against Walz is that he falsely claimed to be a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and to have served in combat while with the National Guard.

“Tim Walz Falsely Claimed He Served in Afghanistan,” read the headline of an August 7 story in the Washington Free Beacon highlighting the controversy. According to the story, Walz’s campaign falsely described him as a “veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom” in an announcement of his 2006 congressional campaign.

The Washington Free Beacon’s headline is misleading. Walz never claimed to have put boots on the ground in Afghanistan, and his unit served in a support role during Operation Enduring Freedom. Between 2003 and 2004, Walz served in Italy as part of the Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery in support of active forces in Afghanistan. “My battalion provided base security throughout the European theater from Turkey to England in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan,” he said in a 2007 C-SPAN interview.

Walz has also not directly claimed that he served in combat, but he has been criticized for exaggerating descriptions of his service during several campaign events. “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,” he says in one widespread video. 

Critics argue that the phrase “carried in war” implies that Walz served in combat or, at the least, was deployed in a combat zone, neither of which he did. “Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and you have not spent a day in a combat zone?” Vance said of the comments during a press conference.

Update, August 10, 2024: The Harris-Walz campaign has released a statement acknowledging that Walz “misspoke” when saying he carried weapons “in war.” From the statement: “In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the Governor misspoke. He did handle weapons of war and believes strongly that only military members trained to carry those deadly weapons should have access to them.”

Claim: Walz Inflated his military rank.

Another claim against Walz is that he has misrepresented his military rank while serving in office.

In 2004, Walz was promoted to the rank of command sergeant major (E-9), the second highest enlisted rank in the Army. He served as an E-9 until his retirement in 2005, after which he was administratively demoted back to a master sergeant (E-8). Despite gaining the E-9 rank, Walz retired before completing the rank’s full requirements, so only qualified to receive the retirement benefits of an E-8. “[Walz] 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,”

Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard, told NBC News on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Politico reported that the Harris campaign had edited a description of Walz on its website that referred to him as a “retired Command Sergeant Major,” changing it to read that he had instead “served as a command sergeant major.”

Update, August 10, 2024: In an email to The Dispatch Fact Check, Ginette Bocanegra, the command communications and public affairs director for the NCO Leadership Center of Excellence, explained that the the coursework Walz needed could have been completed in an 11-month residency program at Fort Bliss, Texas, or through a 24-month remote learning class with a short residency requirement. She confirmed that Walz did not complete his coursework.

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.