A military podcaster has unearthed an image of a challenge coin that Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) allegedly made when he was a congressman, which features a higher military rank than Walz earned but has claimed for years.
A podcast hosted by a drill sergeant posted the image on Friday of the challenge coin, with Walz’s name and the insignia of a Command Sergeant Major, an E-9 rank in the Army.
He told Breitbart News: “The photo was taken by a soldier who received it from the Then Congressman and shared the photo with myself.” Walz has claimed for two decades, since retiring in 2005, that he is a command sergeant major, despite his military paperwork showing he retired as a master sergeant, a lower rank of E-8.
A Daily Wire journalist said she also received information corroborating the coin was legitimate, and an X user found another post that also appeared to corroborate it was an authentic image.
The Harris-Walz campaign, confronted with questions over his rank, scrubbed Walz’s biography to reflect that he was not a retired command sergeant major as he has claimed. While he was promoted to a command sergeant major, it was conditional on him completing the requirements for the rank, which he did not.
He also retired months before his unit deployed to war, knowing it was headed on a deployment, according to Walz’s division commander Doug Julin, as Breitbart News has recently reported.
The campaign also claimed that Walz — who has never deployed to war — “misspoke” when he claimed in 2018 that he carried weapons “in war.”
The coin, if authentic, shows that Walz willfully misrepresented his rank as a congressman.