Herschel Walker, US Republican Senate candidate for Georgia, speaks during a campaign rally in Macon, Georgia, US, on Wednesday, May 18, 2022.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee from Georgia for the U.S. Senate, confirmed that he has two more previously unknown children, adding one other “secret” child that the previous football star admitted to earlier this week.
Walker now says he has 4 kids, only one in every of whom was previously known.
Walker’s disclosure is the second time this week the previous star skilled football player, who has been repeatedly publicly critical of African American absentee fathers, has been forced to confess he had children out of wedlock after media reports of their existence.
Until earlier this week, Walker, whose candidacy to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, has been heavily backed by former President Donald Trump, had only publicly mentioned his 22-year-old son Christian Walker.
On Tuesday, The Every day Beast revealed Walker had a “secret” 10-year-old son he hasn’t played an energetic role in raising.
On Thursday morning, The Every day Beast revealed he had a 3rd son, who’s 13 years old now, out of wedlock. In the identical article, the outlet also reported Walker has a now-adult daughter who he had when he was about 20 years old and a star running back on the University of Georgia football team.
Walker’s campaign told CNBC on Thursday that the ages of the kids as reported by The Every day Beast were correct.
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In an announcement released by his campaign Thursday, Walker claimed he had not told voters about his other children because it will expose them to unwanted attention during a political race. The campaign didn’t reply to CNBC’s query asking what number of women had children by Walker.
“I actually have 4 children. Three sons and a daughter,” Walker said within the statement.
“They are not ‘undisclosed’ — they’re my kids. I support all of them and love all of them. I’ve never denied my children, I confirmed this after I was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports Fitness & Nutrition,” he said.
Walker added: “I just selected not to make use of them as props to win a political campaign. What parent would want their child involved in garbage, gutter politics like this?”
“Saying I hide my children because I do not discuss them with reporters to win a campaign? That is outrageous. I can take the warmth, that is politics — but leave my kids alone,” Walker said.
It is very unusual, but not unheard of, for U.S. political candidates to not discover the kids they’ve when running for office.
In a 2020 interview, Walker, who’s Black, said, “I would like to apologize to the African American community since the fatherless house is a serious, major problem.”
Months earlier, in one other interview, Walker had said men must develop into “fathers of those fatherless” children in neighborhoods with kids whose dads weren’t present of their lives.
The disclosures about Walker’s heretofore unknown kids come as he continues to be criticized for making disputed claims about his business record and other points of his life.
On Monday, the Atlanta Journal-Structure reported that Walker had said in speeches and statements that he had worked with Cobb County, Georgia, police, and in addition claimed to have been an FBI agent.
“I worked for law enforcement, y’all didn’t know that either?” Walker said in 2019. “I hung out at Quantico on the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I used to be an agent?”
Walker will not be, nor has he ever been an FBI agent.
The newspaper said that Cobb County police reported having no record of involvement with him, and that the FBI didn’t reply to questions on Walker.
A campaign spokeswoman told the Journal-Structure that Walker “has supported and worked with law enforcement for years, including talking to police about mental health, leading women’s self-defense training, participating within the FBI Academy at Quantico.”
The spokeswoman also said Walker “was an honorary deputy in Cobb County together with three other Georgia counties but didn’t specify which of them,” the newspaper reported.
The Washington Post on Wednesday noted that Walker’s campaign in December deleted the false claim that he graduated from college.
In April, The Every day Beast published a story titled, “Herschel Walker Claims to Own Corporations That Don’t Exist,” which it said exposed “previously unexamined, and particularly egregious, false claims” by the candidate.