It’s been widely reported that Gov. Tim Walz lied about his military service. We know that Walz rapidly exited the military once he knew he would be deployed in a war zone. And yet he launched his political career by lying about being a military veteran who had gone off to war.

At Dossier.Today, Jordan Schachtel connects the dots to the start of Walz’s political career.

Schachtel dug up an Atlantic profile of Walz telling the big lie that launched his political career.

Command Sergeant Major Tim Walz is a twenty-four-year veteran of the Army National Guard, now retired but still on active duty when a visit from President George W. Bush shortly before the 2004 election coincided with Walz’s homecoming to Mankato, Minnesota. A high school teacher and football coach, he had left to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom. Southern Minnesota is home to a large Guard contingent that includes Walz’s unit, the First 125th Field Artillery Battalion, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are naturally a pressing local concern—particularly to high school students headed into the armed services.

The president’s visit struck Walz as a teachable moment, and he and two students boarded a Bush campaign bus that took them to a quarry where the president was to speak. But after they had passed through a metal detector and their tickets and IDs were checked, they were denied admittance and ordered back onto the bus. One of the boys had a John Kerry sticker on his wallet.

Indignant, Walz refused. “As a soldier, I told them I had a right to see my commander-in-chief,” the normally jovial forty-one-year-old recently explained to a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party dinner in the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota.

His challenge prompted a KGB-style interrogation that was sadly characteristic of Bush campaign events. Do you support the president? Walz refused to answer. Do you oppose the president? Walz replied that it was no one’s business but his own. (He later learned that his wife was informed that the Secret Service might arrest him.) Walz thought for a moment and asked the Bush staffers if they really wanted to arrest a command sergeant major who’d just returned from fighting the war on terrorism.

They did not.

Instead Walz was told to behave himself and permitted to attend the speech, albeit under heavy scrutiny. His students were not: they were sent home. Shortly after this Walz retired from the Guard. Then he did something that until recently was highly unusual for a military man. He announced he was running for Congress—as a Democrat.

Not only was Walz lying about his actual military service, pretending to be a “command sergeant major who’d just returned from fighting the war on terrorism”, but the entire story was one big lie.

In ‘04, I worked for the MNGOP. President Bush visited Mankota on August 4, 2004, and I took pictures of protesters outside the event. Tim Walz (pictured on the far-right) protested Bush’s visit to Minnesota. The thread below from Walz about his role at Bush’s event is dishonest. https://t.co/rEpzoF0yE9 pic.twitter.com/ygLiIEG4p1

— Michael Brodkorb (@mbrodkorb) August 17, 2020

Here Michael Brodkorb shows a photo of Walz protesting the Bush event with a Veterans for Kerry sign.

The whole story about Walz, a combat veteran, bringing students along who then got kicked out because they had a Kerry sticker on their wallet was false.

The true story was that Walz was protesting with a pre-made sign for John Kerry.

A local Democrat also protesting at the time confirmed that story.

My daughter, our friends, and I were on hand that day. We lined the road and demonstrated, as was our first-amendment right. I have clear memories, along with dozens of photos of the event. Tim Walz was there demonstrating, not protesting, with students.

— Dr. Suzanne Bunkers (@SuzannBunkers) August 17, 2020

Walz kept repeating that lie throughout his campaign, claiming that it launched his career in politics. In reality, his career in politics was launched by getting involved with the Kerry campaign, and then being handpicked by Wellstone’s Action group to run for office as a ‘veteran’.

The lying by Walz was constant.

Walz’s political odyssey is a study in strange timing. The thought of a career in Congress “never would have crossed my mind,” the National Guard sergeant major said, if he hadn’t been hustled out of a 2004 rally for President Bush for defending a student there who was wearing a John Kerry sticker. Angered by the event, Walz got involved in the Kerry campaign, making connections that ultimately prompted his race against Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R), whom he beat by six points.

“I never planned to run for Congress, but I believe my life has prepared me well for it,” Walz said.

In another version, Walz claimed that he begged Secret Service agents to let him stay.

Tim Walz, a 23-year National Guardsman and teacher who chaperoned the teens that day, also was threatened with eviction from the grounds but begged numerous Secret Service officers to let him stay. He later wrote in the Mankato Free Press newspaper, “Here I am, a 40-year-old professional and veteran being asked to behave ‘or else…’; at a speech by the president of the United States.”

As of 2020, Walz was still repeating the same basic lie, but had improved it a bit.

“The last sitting President to visit my hometown of Mankato, Minnesota was George W. Bush in 2004. As a high school teacher and football coach, I brought two fellow teachers’ children to the speech as an educational experience. We were denied entry because the students had previously volunteered for the democratic party.

“Having just returned from military duty in Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom I wished to hear directly from the President and my students, regardless of political party, deserved to witness the historical moment of a sitting president coming to our city. Above all, I was struck by how deeply divided our country was becoming that a veteran & a group of high schoolers would be turned away at the door.

“It was at this moment that I decided to run for office. While I had a passion for politics, I had never been overly involved in political campaigns, and many people thought that a high school teacher and football coach didn’t stand a chance.”

This time, Walz correctly stated his service, and modified the story to being turned away before entering.

Walz did not acknowledge the different versions of the story that he had previously put out there and once again claimed that he was a disinterested party who was motivated to run for office because of the incident rather than that he was a partisan there to protest against Bush.

Gov. Tim Walz launched his career with a lie. And he’s been lying about it ever since.