Man who served with Tim Walz calls him 'a military imposter'

By 
 August 14, 2024

Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz's official biography states that he retired from the Army National Guard as a command sergeant major.

Yet in a humiliating move, the man who was forced to replace Walz before deploying to Iraq recently said that claim is a lie.  

"He didn't finish the school"

Retired Command Sergeant Major Tom Behrends leveled that allegation during a Monday appearance on Sirius XM's "Breitbart News Daily."

"He is not one," Behrends said when host Mike Slater brought up the question of Walz status as a retired command sergeant major.

"He didn't finish the school that [when] you get selected to be in an E-9 position, you sign a memorandum of understanding that you're going to finish the academy, [the] United States Army Sergeant Majors Academy," Behrends explained.

"You're going to stay in [the Army] two years after that because the military's got a lot of money invested in you, which is taxpayers' money," the former soldier continued.

"And then if you don't, if you don't do that, you basically get reduced to master sergeant and you're, that’s where you’re at. You're never, you are never given that opportunity ever again that I know of," Behrends stressed.

Walz accused of being "a military imposter"

Behrends further alleged that Walz has been "campaigning ruthlessly to trick the public into thinking he was higher ranked than he was," adding that the governor is "a military imposter."

"There's a civilian version of it that buys a uniform at Goodwill and puts it on and walks around and acting like he’s something he's not," Behrends remarked.

"And then you have the military ones that do a higher rank than they are, or they might have more medals or ribbons than they actually earned, or they might have service stripes that show they put in more years or whatever," he stressed.

This is not the first time that Behrends has publicly gone after Walz, as he and fellow retired Command Sergeant Major Paul Herr previously did so in 2018.

Former soldiers say Walz lied about why he retired

In a letter they sent to the West Central Tribune, Behrends and Herr accused Walz of lying about why he retired from the National Guard.

"His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense Directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have," they wrote.

Instead, Behrends and Herr maintained Walz' actually left the military because he wanted to avoid being deployed to Iraq.

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