A retired sergeant major has accused Minnesota Governor Tim Walz of “abandoning” his Minnesota National Guard unit after being told it had to prepare for a deployment to Iraq.
Walz, who was chosen by Vice President Kamala Harris as her running mate, served for more than two decades in the Army National Guard, and his selection helps bolster the candidate on defense issues.
The timing of his separation from the military came to light during his 2008 campaign for governor.
Retired Master Sergeant Thomas Behrends of the Minnesota National Guard accused Walz of “embellishing” his record and abandoning his unit when he left the Guard to run for Congress.
“Tim Walz has selectively embellished and omitted facts and circumstances of his military career for years,” Behrends wrote in 2018.
“In early 2005, a warning order was issued to the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion, which included the post I was serving at, to prepare to be mobilized to active duty for a deployment to Iraq,” Behrends and Paul Herr wrote in a letter they posted on Facebook.
Vice President Kamaal Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. The governor spent two decades in the Army National Guard. A retired sergeant major accused him of retiring to avoid a deployment to Iraq.
‘On May 16, 2005, he resigned, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its soldiers hanging, without their top noncommissioned officer, as the battalion prepared for war.’
“His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire to run for Congress,” they wrote, calling the claim “false.” They say the decision left his unit without a key leader as it prepared to deploy.
Waltz disputed the characterization, telling the Winona Daily News that he did not resign because of deployment orders, in a dispute reported by the The Daily Wire amid the fierce battle to define Harris’ running mate.
“After completing 20 years of service in 2001, I re-enlisted to serve our country for four more years after 9/11 and retired the year before my battalion was deployed to Iraq to run for Congress,” he wrote.
Walz, 60, enlisted in the Guard at the age of 17. He became the highest category soldier enlisted to serve in Congress.
He said he considered the letter a “partisan political attack.”
“I’m proud of my military service, but it’s a part of me. It doesn’t define me,” Walz told Minnesota Public Radio in 2018. After going through basic training in Georgia, he was deployed to Arkansas, Texas and the Arctic Circle on disaster response and other missions. “You go where they tell you to go,” he said.
Al Bonnifield, who served under Walz, told the The Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper Walz had already begun thinking about retirement after being deployed to Italy during Operation Enduring Freedom following 9/11.
“Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the average soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to get out of a deployment? ’ And he didn’t,” she told the paper. “He talked to us for quite a while about that issue. He weighed the decision to run for Congress very heavily. He loved the Army, he loved the Guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”
Veteran Joseph Eustice, who led the same battalion as Walz, called him a “great soldier” and added: “When he decided to leave, he had every right to do so.”
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign for further comment.
Walz’s duties in a field artillery unit included firing howitzer cannons, a task that Walz says caused him hearing damage that required surgery.
The explosions, he wrote in a benefits application, “knocked us down and after firing I had ringing in my ears.”
Walz served for 21 years in the Army National Guard.
Harris’s group believes Walz will be able to reach rural voters in the Midwest.
His lawyer said hearing loss played a role in his 1995 arrest for drunk driving.
In 2005, he underwent a surgical procedure called a stapedectomy, in which doctors replaced damaged ear bones with synthetic ones.
Walz invoked hearing loss during a low moment that emerged after Harris selected him over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and other contenders.
In 1995, he was pulled over while driving 96 mph in a 55 mph zone. He failed a field sobriety test and was arrested for driving under the influence. He later pleaded guilty and had the charges reduced to reckless driving.
His attorney, Kerry Greeley, told the Rochester, Minnesota Post Bulletin that hearing loss played a role.
“He couldn’t understand what the officer was saying to him,” attorney Kerry Greeley told the newspaper.