Donald Trump's campaign was sent scrambling Wednesday after a group of Republican lawmakers accused Gov. Tim Walz of stolen valor then faced the same accusation from some of their fellow veterans.
Team Trump was forced to retract a letter, purporting to come from dozens of Republicans who described themselves as retired from military service, after the progressive advocacy group Vote Vets looked at their service records and debunked the claim.
"We deleted the first letter we posted to correct a copy edit mistake made by a staffer," Trump's campaign wrote on Truth Social. "This was corrected within hours, unlike Tim Walz, who still hasn’t corrected the record and admitted that he lied about his military service for decades to advance his political career."
While Trump's campaign suggested one mistake was to blame for the erroneous letter, a comparison of the two letters show multiple changes were made.
The list in the second names does not include 40 "retired" designations and each member's service rank has been deleted.
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These changes were made after Vote Vets determined that 28 of the signatures came from Republicans who had not served the 20-year minimum the Department of Defense requires retirees to first complete.
The group called out Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), a former Navy officer identified in the Team Trump letter as a Rear Admiral who was demoted to Captain after he retired, and Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), who came under fire for donning a pin issued to him in error.
"To see you signing a letter to ANYONE about stolen valor is the height of hypocrisy," the group wrote in a direct message to Nehls. "Ask anyone who’s seen you wearing that Combat Infantryman’s Badge that you never earned!"
The basis for conservatives' criticism of Walz, who retired from the National Guard after 24 years of service, include a comment Walz made about gun control and his reference to himself as a retired command sergeant major.
The latter claim was shrugged off by several veterans and stolen valor experts interviewed by the New York Times on Wednesday.
"While he served at that rank in the last weeks of his National Guard service, Mr. Walz was reverted to one rank lower, master sergeant, as he did not complete coursework required," the report notes.
Doug Sterner, a military historian who helped draft the Stolen Valor Act, told the Times he likened Walz to “a fisherman that caught a 21-pound fish that everybody said, ‘No, it was 20 pounds.’ Maybe it lost a pound between the time he caught it and when he got to the weigh station.”
