FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 14, 2022 

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Walker Has Never Been “Transparent” About His Violent Behavior and Disturbing Conduct

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Walker’s failure to address the violence undermines his repeated claims of transparency.”

Savannah, GA — In tonight’s debate, Herschel Walker claimed that he’s been transparent for his disturbing conduct and threats of violence toward women, including his ex-wife. The problem? He hasn’t. 

As the Atlanta-Journal Constitution has reported, Walker “dodges questions” about the disturbing conduct by “saying he addressed his behavior in his 2008 memoir, ‘Breaking Free,’…but the 264-page book never mentions violence directed at [his ex-wife],” and “in fact, it seems to suggest there were no altercations.” 

The AJC goes on to report that “Walker’s failure to address the violence undermines his repeated claims of transparency.” Walker has also failed to acknowledge threatening behavior that was revealed just this year by legal order — which the Associated Press acknowledged contradicts “Walker’s assertion that he has long since been a changed person.” 

The facts are clear: Herschel Walker has never taken accountability for his pattern of disturbing conduct and violent behavior, and he’s not ready to represent the people of Georgia in the U.S. Senate.

Read more below:

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Herschel Walker says he’s been transparent about past violence – has he?

• When Herschel Walker is asked about his history of violence against his ex-wife, the Republican U.S. Senate hopeful often says he’s been transparent about the tumultuous period when “my mental health was at its worst.”
• Instead, at campaign events and in interviews he often dodges questions about his abusive relationship with Cindy Grossman by saying he addressed his behavior in his 2008 memoir, “Breaking Free.”
• But the 264-page book never mentions violence directed at Grossman. In fact, it seems to suggest there were no altercations as it describes his struggle with mental illness.
• “I can’t point to any major blowups between us, but I felt like things had eroded,” he wrote, discussing the end of his marriage.
• Walker’s failure to address the violence undermines his repeated claims of transparency at a time when his history is facing sharper scrutiny. Republican and Democratic groups have aired ads featuring news clips of Grossman describing Walker physically assaulting her and holding a gun to her head.
• “The guns and knives. I got into a few choking things with him,” Grossman said in the interview. “He held the gun to my temple and said he was gonna blow my brains out.”
• Rather than speak about what happened during their tumultuous marriage, Walker instead alludes to his struggle with dissociative identity disorder and stresses that Grossman helped him through a rocky time in his life. He calls attempts to bring more attention to his past a descent into “gutter politics.
• [Grossman] also revealed in interviews with ABC and CNN that Walker had been physically abusive.
• Walker has not denied Grossman’s allegations. In the 2008 ABC story, he acknowledged he “probably did it” but asserted that he couldn’t remember. Memory lapses are common in DID.
• Walker has not repeated that explanation on the campaign trail. And although he has given dozens of speeches over the years about his mental health struggles, it does not appear he mentioned the domestic violence aimed at his ex-wife.
• Nor does he mention that in 2005 she took out a protective order against him. Grossman’s sister Maria Tsettos alleged in an affidavit that Walker had repeatedly threatened to kill Grossman and her boyfriend. A Dallas County, Texas, judge granted the protective order and temporarily barred Walker from possessing guns.
• As he entered politics, Walker has conflated his openness about his mental health with openness on domestic violence. When reporters ask him about Grossman’s claims, he directs them to his book.
• “I think people in Georgia know who I am. I wrote a book about it,” he said in March.
• In a 2021 interview, Walker suggested that the media “educate themselves, maybe buy my book and read it.”
• He told Axios in December: “I’m always accountable to whatever I’ve ever done. And that’s what I tell people: I’m accountable to it.”
• In a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, he said, “I wrote a book about my experience — every painful detail.”
• Sometimes he ignores the question altogether.
• Jan Christianson, executive director of the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said Walker needs to publicly set the record straight about what those details are.
• “There can be no road to nonviolence if there has been an episode and you are not willing to address it,” she said. “You need to take personal accountability.”
• Joanna Finkelstein, a Republican from Newnan, said she is undecided in the Senate race. The domestic violence allegations concern her.
• “Someone who can’t control themselves, can you trust them?” she asked.

Associated Press: Police records complicate Herschel Walker’s recovery story

• One warm fall evening in 2001, police in Irving, Texas, received an alarming call from Herschel Walker’s therapist. The football legend and current Republican Senate candidate in Georgia was “volatile,” armed and scaring his estranged wife at the suburban Dallas home they no longer shared.
• Officers took cover outside, noting later that Walker had “talked about having a shoot-out with police.” Then they ordered the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and onetime Dallas Cowboy to step out of the home, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
• Much of what happened that day at the $1.9 million mansion remains shrouded from view because the report, which Irving police released to the AP only after ordered to do so by the Texas attorney general’s office, was extensively redacted.
• The incident adds another layer to Walker’s already turbulent personal history, which includes his acknowledged struggles with mental health, violent outbursts and accusations that he repeatedly threatened his ex-wife. And it will test voters’ acceptance of Walker’s assertion that he has long since been a changed person.
• Walker’s campaign dismissed the newly surfaced information and blamed the media for highlighting it.
• A review of court records and police reports documents a far more turbulent path than portrayed in Walker’s book, which was framed as a turnaround story.
• About a year into his treatment, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader told Irving police in May 2002 that she believed Walker had been lurking outside her house. The woman said she had a “confrontation” with him roughly a year earlier, which led to Walker making threatening phone calls and “having her house watched,” according to a police report. The threats subsided, but after Walker spotted her outside a Four Seasons resort in Irving, she told police that he followed her as she drove home.
• Walker’s ex-wife has said that she was a repeated target of his abuse.
• Now going by the name Cindy Grossman, she described violent outbursts in their divorce proceedings, telling of “physically abusive and threatening behavior.” When his book was released, she told ABC News that at one point during their marriage, her husband pointed a pistol at her head and said, “I’m going to blow your … brains out.”

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