Six Things to Know About the Tim Walz ‘Stolen Valor’ Claims

Plus: What about JD Vance’s military service?

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally on August 6, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

BY NOW, YOU HAVE PROBABLY HEARD some version of the controversies touching on the military service of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president—specifically relating to his retirement from the military and what he has said about his service. Here are six things to keep in mind about Walz’s military record, the issue of “stolen valor” that some Republicans have invoked, and how all this relates to our politics.

1. This story is still evolving.

Although Walz has been in elected office for a long time—a dozen years in Congress followed by five years as the chief executive of Minnesota—the level of scrutiny his reputation will face over the next three months is more intense than anything he previously faced.

More attention than ever before will be paid to Walz’s verbal or written inaccuracies, both old and new. A slip of the tongue? A mistake in a moment of forgetfulness? A lost form, or one filled out wrong? An exaggeration while telling a story? A major pattern of long-term deception? You can expect any of these to be dug up and to be treated by his political opponents as devastating and disqualifying.

That’s just how opposition research works.

Expect more to come. It always does.

Sometimes, sorting through the conflicting interpretations just takes some common sense. Other times, it requires the help of honest commentators with expertise and integrity. In this case, both are useful.

2. Walz served honorably.

Tim Walz served in the Army National Guard from 1981 to 2005. Unless new revelations point to a crime, Walz’s service characterization will remain honorable. His superiors, commanding officers, and raters had twenty-four years to establish a record of a self-centered soldier who always put himself before his troops. They did not do so.

Twenty-four years is plenty of time to paint a vivid picture in performance reports. Nevertheless, the Nebraska National Guard (where Walz began his service) and the Minnesota National Guard (where he continued it after 1996) kept promoting him. He was eventually asked to serve as a command sergeant major (CSM). Why did his superiors do that if Walz was—as a few people who served with him have said—such a problem senior noncommissioned officer?

Real talk: Over the course of a military career, you will make friends, but there will also be people with grudges against you, bad feelings, and axes to grind. That’s the nature of the job, especially in the National Guard, where soldiers serve together in the same units for the majority of their careers. On active duty, service members often rotate in and out of units scattered across the board. So it’s quite common to find unhappy former colleagues and comrades to opine about anyone with a long service record, even someone generally admired and beloved.

During my twenty-year career, I demoted service members and kicked a few out of the military for issues ranging from sexual assault to a refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Those decisions, like many Walz likely made as an SNCO, did not sit well with everyone involved.

Yes, Walz and his campaign were not completely precise in characterizing his rank upon retirement. Walz served as a CSM but was reduced in rank—which is not the same thing as being demoted for cause—because he failed to complete some coursework. (One more bit of real talk: The required coursework might well have been a huge waste of time. Military coursework is often superficial and useless. But checking those boxes for promotion is an important rung on the meritocratic ladder.)

3. JD Vance served honorably.

Whatever one thinks of JD Vance, the Department of Defense wrote on his DD-214, the Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty, that when he left the United States Marine Corps in 2007 after four years, it was under honorable conditions. Vance, who served as a combat correspondent for the Marines but never saw combat during his 2005 Iraq deployment, may have fewer medals than Walz. However, that is what one would expect of a Marine with only one enlistment.

Real talk: If you haven’t served and are posting absurd memes comparing the service record of an E-8/9 (Walz’s rank) and an E-4 (Vance’s rank), you should stop. It’s a bad look—but more importantly, you don’t have standing or likely even the knowledge to compare and contrast the service of two men who served honorably.

4. Ducking deployments?

Any Iraq or Afghanistan veteran knows of people who ducked deployments. In 2008, when I was a wee lieutenant, my Provincial Reconstruction Team’s deputy commander, who somehow made the rank of lieutenant colonel, ducked out of our deployment at the last minute because of a “tooth pain,” which caused him to delay his deployment . . . for nearly six months! When I was a squadron commander in 2021, I had a few airmen, aided no doubt by the finest barracks lawyers available, who tried to wriggle out of a deployment. Did it upset me? Sure, a little, but I didn’t take it all that personally.

That doesn’t mean ducking out of a deployment isn’t important. It is, but it’s also not exceedingly rare. According to some of Walz’s former CSMs, Walz filed for retirement before his unit conducted a very dangerous year-long deployment to Iraq so he could run for Congress, then said he would not be retiring, then did, in fact, retire. However there remains some confusion about the timeline of his retirement and of the timing of his battalion’s knowledge about their deployment.

Did Walz break any rules or regulations by retiring when and how he did? If he did, again, then his battalion commander should have held him accountable. The military had ample time and space to characterize Walz’s service as anything but honorable, and it did not. Still, Walz’s campaign could quash this entire thing by providing the exact date that Walz applied for retirement, allowing us to compare that date to when his battalion received orders to Iraq.

This one may be the most damaging of all the charges against Walz, though it will be difficult to prove. I deployed six times to Iraq and Afghanistan for over four years. In between my fourth and fifth deployments, my father had a stroke and was essentially dying. I probably could have pushed back on another deployment to Afghanistan. It would have been easy, especially for an experienced, battle-hardened officer. But I had to go, and I knew that my father would have wanted me to go. In short, it’s a very complicated emotional issue; regardless of what veteran any media outlet trots out, it’s subjective.

However, let’s say Walz did duck the deployment. Even that doesn’t necessarily erase twenty-four years of honorable service. After a quarter century, perhaps Walz just decided it was time for something new. Or maybe he didn’t click with his battalion commander, and it was time for everyone involved to find greener pastures. Who knows?

In short, people’s careers are never pristine. For example, a close friend of mine was a “tier one” Joint Special Operations Command analyst who excelled at hunting and killing in the shadows. However, his career ended somewhat awkwardly because he did not fit in with another unit’s culture. I’m sure some people in his last unit thought he wasn’t a great service member. And perhaps he wasn’t at that specific point in time. However, he was also the same service member who supported operations that killed some of America’s most lethal enemies.

5. “Weapons of war,” “in support” of Afghanistan, and “stolen valor”?

A video making the rounds shows Walz, apparently in the last couple of weeks, arguing against assault weapons, saying, “We can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war are only carried in war.” I must admit I found these comments foolish, but not for the same reasons that Walz’s critics pillory him. I carried all sorts of weapons in war: knives, hatchets, shotguns, and various handguns. Those are weapons of war, right? Instead, JD Vance and his allies zeroed in on the “I carried in war” part of Walz’s statement.

So what counts as “going to war”? Obviously fighting in a combat zone would count as going to war. But what about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan and serving in support roles but not seeing combat, like JD Vance? This is, of course, not a slam against combat correspondents. During my time in Afghanistan, I had the honor of giving a “combat cam” a ride through some of the most dangerous battlefields in Afghanistan. Rather, it shows that even having the term “combat” in your job description does not necessarily mean that you saw or experienced combat.

Often, service members will receive medals or ribbons that show they were either shot at or returned fire (e.g., the Combat Action Badge, the Combat Action Medal). But even then, the military does not always get it right. For example, one of my closest brothers-in-arms spent a year fighting as an enabler with various maneuver units. However, because he was attached to those units but not a member of them, nobody from his higher headquarters put him in for a combat medal, which he earned. Is he a combat veteran or not? In short, many of these debates can descend into semantics that would make a lawyer beam with pride while driving most people crazy.

In Walz’s case, he deployed to Europe in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (the war in Afghanistan). Deployments are not always on the frontlines. During the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, service members routinely deployed to other spots inside the United States. While I was stationed in Tampa, we had a reservist in our intelligence shop who was deployed with us in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (the war in Iraq). As a commander, I had an airman deployed to Savannah to support operations overseas. So, yes, people deploy everywhere, not just in dangerous spots.

Another case in point: Our military drone operators might fly hundreds of missions and face PTSD and other mental health consequences, but are still officially considered to have had no “combat service.” Would you say they had “weapons of war” while “in war”?

My point is that these categories are messy and that while Walz’s brief remark could be considered misleading (i.e., he did not carry weapons into a war zone), it is also defensible (i.e., he did carry weapons while serving in a war). Either way, though, I don’t see how this incident reaches the level of ‘stolen valor,’ as some commentators have claimed. The original Stolen Valor Act was ruled unconstitutional, and while new legislation has been introduced, it centers mainly on those who profit off combat medals. At most, again, unless more specific evidence is unearthed, Walz was simply imprecise with his words.

6. This is a ‘veteran’s issue,’ not a ‘veterans issue.’

American veterans are diverse. Some veterans, upon hearing reports about Walz’s retirement or his descriptions of his service, will take great offense. That’s fine. They wore the uniform and have earned the right to disparage Walz’s words and deeds. In turn, other veterans will chuckle at JD Vance’s chutzpah for launching such an attack, considering how his running mate avoided service in Vietnam, repeatedly attacked and dishonored the late Sen. John McCain, and reportedly used the words “losers” and “suckers” to describe American war dead.

This squabble between Walz and Vance is a gigantic distraction from veterans’ issues. Walz and Vance should be focusing on the DoD’s inability to track traumatic brain injuries. Or perhaps they should propose ways to fix the always-struggling Department of Veterans Affairs. Considering this week is the anniversary of the fall of Afghanistan, perhaps Walz and Vance could focus on that humiliating debacle.

Instead, both campaigns will likely spend more time and resources fighting in these muddy trenches instead of discussing policies that could determine the nation’s security or ensure the welfare of the veterans who sacrificed for it.