Herschel Walker, the GOP candidate who is facing Senator Raphael Warnock in the November general election, defended his decision to flash a police badge during last week’s debate between the two candidates as evidence of his connections to law enforcement.
Mr Walker, who lacks a college degree and has never been employed as a law enforcement officer by any federal, state, or local police or investigative agency, has nonetheless claimed to have been an FBI agent and has also made statements in which he falsely asserted that he has spent time working as a sworn police officer.
On Friday, Mr Warnock called Mr Walker out for the practice during their only head-to-head debate.
“One thing I have not done — I have never pretended to be a police officer. And I’ve never threatened a shootout with the police,” he said.
The former football star responded by flashing a star-shaped badge he’d pulled from his suit jacket towards the camera and claiming he “worked with many police officers”.
But in a interview with NBC News, Mr Walker defended the move and said he carries it “all the time” and noted that he was given the badge “by a police officer”.
When NBC correspondent Kristen Welker asked who gave it to him, Mr Walker responded: “This badge is from, um—this badge. I have badges from all over the—all over Georgia, even from Chatham County. I had to wait—wait—I had from Chatham County, which is a county, which is a county, uh, which is a county from…”
Pressed further on the origins of the badge, he told Ms Welker it is “from the sheriff from Johnson County”.
“Everyone can make fun, but this badge give me the right… If anything happened in this county, I have the right to work with the police getting things done,” he said.
After Welker asked if the badge gives him any police powers, Mr Walker admitted that it is only an honourary badge, but he then contradicted himself by saying that police “can call me whenever they want me and I have the authority to do things for them to work with them all day”.
