The Georgia GOP nominee’s confession comes after a report Tuesday in the Daily Beast that Walker became the father of a son more than a decade ago. The Beast said it had confirmed the identity of the boy and the mother and that the mother had sued Walker for a declaration of paternity and child support. According to the report, Walker has been sentenced to pay child support since 2014.
Walker, who is vying for Democratic Sen. Rafael Warnock in one of the country’s key Senate contests this year, often talks about Christian Walker, the son he and his ex-wife had together and raised with Walker’s current wife.
Walker has publicly criticized absent fathers, especially in black families.
“And I want to apologize to the African-American community because the orphanage is a major, big problem,” Walker told Conservative activist Charlie Kirk in an interview in 2020. In another interview the same year with conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk, Walker said that men who have “a child by a woman, even if you have to leave this woman … you do not leave the child.”
When asked to confirm the Daily Beast report, Walker’s campaign provided CNN with a statement from campaign manager Scott Paradise.
“Herschel had a child years ago when he was not married. He supported the child and continues to do so. He is proud of his children. To suggest that Herschel is “hiding” the child because he did not use it in his political campaigns is insulting and absurd, Paradise said.
Ever since entering the political arena – with the enthusiastic support of former President Donald Trump – Walker has faced several questions about his story of his own life and experience.
In one case, he claimed for years that he had graduated from the University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class and included the details on his campaign website. But CNN’s KFile confirmed the April report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Walker did not graduate from UGA, the school where he became a football star and left early to play professionally. The claim that he graduated top in his class was deleted from his campaign website a few months earlier, along with the claim that he forgave his high school (which has been replaced by a claim that he was on top of his last month, Walker even falsely stated that he had not made the false claim of graduating from UGA.
A seat in the Georgia Senate is a major goal for Republicans this fall; Warnock won it in a runoff in 2021, two months after President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
In a statement, Walker’s campaign also raised the issue of Warnock’s alimony dispute with his ex-wife, who is suing to change the terms of Warnock’s payments.
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