Ohio Sen. JD Vance on Wednesday baselessly accused his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, of “stolen valor,” charging that Vice President Kamala Harris’ newly anointed running mate “lied” about his military service and “abandoned” his unit before they were deployed to Iraq in 2005.
Vance, a U.S. Marine veteran and the Republican Party's nominee for vice president, referenced years-old and long-disputed criticisms of Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years, by some soldiers who served alongside him that the then 41-year-old left the service months before their battalion was deployed to Iraq. Walz has said he left the service to pursue a run for Congress in 2006, winning his first of six terms in the House.
“What really bothers me about Tim Walz, as a Marine who served his country in uniform, when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq, to serve my country, I did it,” Vance said at a press conference in Shelby Township, Mich. “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 that he's been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with.”
“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,” Vance added.
Walz, whose official biographies have long said he retired as a command sergeant major and billed him as “the highest-ranking enlisted service member ever to serve in Congress,” enlisted in the Nebraska National Guard at 17 and served in the Minnesota National Guard in the 1990s and early 2000s. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Walz was deployed to Italy as part of Operation Enduring Freedom from Aug. 2003 to April 2004.
He served as a high-ranking, non-commissioned officer in a field artillery regiment — damaging his ear and hearing to the point of necessitating surgery, according to medical records obtained by Minnesota Public Radio — and reached the rank of command sergeant major. However, he retired one rank lower as a master sergeant “for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard, told Spectrum News in a statement.
In 2018, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard told MPR that it was legitimate for Walz to say he served as a command sergeant major even if he retired at a lower rank.
"I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that," Walz told MPR in 2018. "I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI Bill to leadership opportunities to everything else."
Several of Walz’s fellow soldiers have come forward with accusations that he left the service after finding out his battalion would be deployed to Iraq. Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Tom Behrends, who served with Walz, has publicized the accusations since at least 2018, calling the governor “a traitor” in an interview with the New York Post on Tuesday. Behrends campaigned with and donated $2,500 to Walz’s Republican opponent in 2022.
"I don't know if Tom just disagrees with my politics or whatever, but my record speaks for itself and my accomplishments in uniform speak for itself, and there's many people in this crowd, too, that I served with," Walz told the Minneapolis’ Star Tribune in 2022. "It's just unfortunate."
Other soldiers who served with Walz have argued there was nothing to suggest Walz’s departure from the service warrants suspicion. Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Joseph Eustice told the Star Tribune in 2022 that Walz “was a great soldier” and that “when he chose to leave, he had every right to leave.” He speculated that soldiers who claimed otherwise were misinformed or even harbored grudges for being passed over for promotions.
On Wednesday, Eustice shared a Facebook post attacking Walz’s tenure as governor. When asked in the comments why he was criticizing the man he once defended, Eustice responded “he was a good soldier” even if he now thinks Walz “is not a good politician.”
Another soldier who served with Walz, told MPR in 2018 that Walz had spoken at length about leaving the service to pursue a career in politics.
"Would the soldier look down on him because he didn't go with us? Would the common soldier say, 'Hey, he didn't go with us, he's trying to skip out on a deployment?' And he wasn't," Bonnifield said. "He talked with us for quite a while on that subject. He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with."
Bonnifield did deploy to Iraq and returned with mental health issues that he said Walz helped connect struggling Guard members with help and worked to cut red tape as a member of Congress.
According to a 2007 National Guard article, Walz's battalion recieved "alert orders" they were set to be deployed in Iraq in July 2005, after he had already retired. They ended up deploying in March 2006 and stayed through June 2007, which the National Guard noted was "the longest continuous deployment of any military unit during Operation Iraqi Freedom" at the time. CNN first resurfaced the 2007 article in a report on Wednesday.
When they returned, Walz authored a resolution in the House commending the soldiers and is quoted in the National Guard article saying, "I served alongside these Soldiers for many years and I could not be more proud of them. They endured their extended deployment with patience and determination and their distinguished service record in Iraq speaks for itself. Today, every Minnesotan should be proud to call the Red Bulls our neighbors and friends."
The Harris campaign defended Walz's service record and pointed to his record working on veterans issues in Congress, saying through a spokesperson "as Vice President of the United States he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.”
For his part, Vance served in the Marines for four years out of high school, the majority spent as a combat correspondent — or “public affairs marine,” as he described it in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” In his memoir, Vance describes his time in the service as “largely uneventful” and writes he “was lucky to escape any real fighting” during a six month deployment to Iraq.
But on Wednesday, Vance said he was bothered by Walz’s “stolen valor garbage.” He responded specifically to Walz’s comments, shared by the Harris campaign on Tuesday, calling for gun control measures because “weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place those weapons are out.”
“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? When was this? What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and he has not spent a day in a combat zone,” Vance said. “What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you're not.”
“I'd be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did,” Vance added.
Notably, Vance’s running mate, former President Donald Trump, never served in the military despite coming of age when the draft was still in place amid the height of the Vietnam War. In 1968, as he graduated from college, Trump was diagnosed with bone spurs and received a medical deferment from the draft.
“I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels,” Mr. Trump said in 2016.
In 2018, the New York Times interviewed the daughters of a podiatrist who they claim gave Trump the diagnosis as “a favor” for Trump’s influential real estate magnate father. The doctor rented office space from Trump’s father and his partner lived in apartments owned by Trump’s father, moving into the first one the same year Trump received his exemption from the draft, according to the Times.
“It's amazing, I can't even believe it. I've been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It's like Vietnam, sort of,” Trump told Howard Stern in 1997 as the pair discussed sexually transmitted diseases. “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”
Spectrum News’ David Mendez contributed to this report.
NOTE: This article has been updated with further information.