Trump-Backed Senate Candidate Herschel Walker Lied About Education History For Years: Report

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Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker has been lying about graduating in the top 1 percent of his class at the University of Georgia, according to a new CNN report Friday.

“And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself,” CNN quotes Walker saying in a 2017 motivational speech. “So that Herschel that all the kids said was retarded become valedictorian of his class. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class.”

Walker is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and the current front-runner to be the Republican nominee to run against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in November. The seat would be a key pick-up in the Republican’s bid to retake the majority in the U.S. Senate.

CNN notes that Walker also put the false claim on his campaign website. Walker acknowledged to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution in December that it was not only false but that he never actually graduated from the University of Georgia.

Walker, who was a football hero at the University of Georgia before leaving to start his acclaimed NFL career, is also a successful businessman and prominent Black conservative with close ties to Trump.

CNN also reported that Walker had inflated his grade point average over the years and told conflicting stories about returning to the University of Georgia to get his degree.

“It’s unclear when Walker began claiming he graduated from Georgia, and press accounts began listing him as returning to get his degree as early as 1983 after he left to join the United States Football League, a rival to the National Football League in the 1980s,” CNN reports, noting that Walker has been making the claim for many years.

“I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class of college,” Walker told Sirius XM radio in an interview in 2017.

Walker has a complicated personal history. According to an associated Associated Press story from July 2021, Walker has been accused of both domestic troubles and exaggerating his business success:

An Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of public records tied to Walker’s business ventures and his divorce, including many not previously reported, sheds new light on a turbulent personal history that could dog his Senate bid. The documents detail accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wife’s life, exaggerated claims of financial success, and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.

In a 2008 book, Walker also detailed his struggles with mental health. “In his book, Walker acknowledges violent urges,” the AP notes. “He writes that he played Russian roulette and recounts sitting at his kitchen table in 1991 pointing a gun, loaded with a single bullet, at his head. ‘I wasn’t suicidal,’ Walker explained, but ‘just looked at mortality as the ultimate challenge.’”