After winning the House Speaker gavel in 2007, Nancy Pelosi held a press conference with a group of freshman Democrats, one of whom she described as a retired "command sergeant major" in the National Guard who had served his country "on the battlefield."
"He will speak for himself, but I want him to know how much we all appreciate his service to our country, whether it's in the classroom or on the battlefield," Pelosi said of the rookie lawmaker, Tim Walz.
Walz, now the Democratic nominee for vice president, took the podium at the Feb. 16, 2007, press conference, thanked Pelosi for her remarks, and then moved on to discuss the topic at hand. Walz didn't mention that he had never seen a war zone in his 24 years of service in the National Guard.
"Well, thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you to the leadership here," the Minnesota congressman said to Pelosi, who years later would privately lobby Kamala Harris to select Walz as her vice presidential running mate. C-SPAN, which filmed the press conference, called Walz an "Afghanistan War Veteran," according to video of the event unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon.
It emerges as Republicans and some military veterans accuse Walz of embellishing his service record. Walz, now governor of Minnesota, never saw combat and was never deployed to a war zone. He saw deployments to Norway in support of NATO forces and Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the war in Afghanistan.
But Walz claimed to have been a "veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom" on a political sign he carried in 2004 and on his campaign website in 2006, the Free Beacon reported. And in a video that the Kamala Harris campaign posted this week, Walz called for a ban on the kind of "weapons of war" that "I carried in war." In 2006, Walz’s campaign website touted articles from the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and others that inaccurately referred to Walz as a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As with Pelosi, Walz did not correct those stories.
Some Walz critics have accused him of "stolen valor," in which individuals fabricate or embellish their military status for personal gain, an allegation the Harris-Walz campaign has rejected.
Walz also overstated his rank by claiming to have retired in 2005 as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted person to have ever served in Congress.
Walz referred to himself with that title in the press conference with Pelosi, which was held to push legislation for more pay for soldiers. "As someone who's spent their entire military career as an enlisted person, my job as a command sergeant major or as a first sergeant was solely to take care of these troops," Walz said.
But the National Guard said Walz is officially ranked as a sergeant major, an E-8. He failed to complete the coursework required to maintain the command sergeant major rank, an E-9.
Walz, though, claimed the rank of "command sergeant major" in numerous speeches and interviews and at least six hearings for the House Veterans Affairs Committee, where Walz served throughout his congressional career, the Free Beacon found.
"I'm sitting here as a new member of Congress, who was a command sergeant major, whose total life was devoted to making sure those soldiers were taken care of," he said at a March 13, 2007, hearing.
Walz has also been accused of retiring from the Minnesota National Guard after learning his battalion would be deployed to Iraq. One former Minnesota National Guard member told the Free Beacon the timing of Walz’s departure "left a bad taste in a lot of peoples’ mouths."
Media outlets have claimed Walz was not aware that his battalion could be deployed to Iraq when he retired from the National Guard to run for Congress. But an archived copy of a Walz campaign press release from March 20, 2005, shows Walz anticipated that his unit would soon be sent to Iraq.
"As Command Sergeant Major, I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq but also to serve if called on," Walz said in the campaign statement, the Free Beacon reported.
How Pelosi got the impression Walz served on the battlefield is unclear, but Walz's aides have acknowledged in the past that Walz’s description of his military service at the time had confused some of his constituents in southern Minnesota. When an Iraq war veteran confronted Walz aides in 2009 about his claims to be an Afghanistan veteran, one staffer acknowledged it was a source of confusion.
"I know people have approached me as a staffer and thought that, so I corrected them," the Walz staffer said.