Herschel Walker exaggerated claims about charity donations: NYT

Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker exaggerated claims about charity donations his company made to at least four organizations, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Through his food distribution company Renaissance Man Food Services (RMSF), which is now owned by his holding company, H. Walker Enterprises, Walker once pledged to donate 15 percent of his profits to nonprofit charitable organizations, according to the Times.

Walker named four organizations as part of that pledge — the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Special Olympics, PE4Life Foundation and the Boy Scouts of America — but also said even more organizations were recipients of donations.

His company mentioned donations to those charities between 2007 and 2017, according to the Times. When the newspaper contacted each of the charities, however, two of them said they were not aware of any donations and the Special Olympics declined to comment.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society told the Times it received $860 from Walker in 2005 and $1,000 from RMSF in 2006. The organization also received $25 in 2009 from RMSF.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Walker’s campaign pointed to a sentence in the Times article that reads: “The Times’s reporting did not conclusively prove that Mr. Walker’s company failed to donate profits.”

The newspaper acknowledged it was “difficult to know for certain that any company or group did not donate to a charity, because there are more than a million charities in the United States, and many do not disclose their donors.”

Walker, a former NFL player and University of Georgia football legend who is locked in a close race against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock for the Georgia seat, has come under increased scrutiny since launching his first bid for public office.

The GOP candidate was slammed earlier this year for not previously disclosing the fact he had fathered three children. He also faces allegations of domestic abuse against a former partner.

Walker has also been accused of exaggerating other details about his life. The candidate once said he graduated in the top 1 percent of his class, but he in fact never graduated from college, instead going to play for the NFL. Walker also claimed he worked for law enforcement and said he had employed 800 people through RMSF in 2020, which actually had eight employees that year.

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