Georgians Call Out Herschel Walker’s Overwhelming Pattern of Lies, Exaggerations, and Unanswered Questions

Today, Georgians representing Atlanta’s business and labor communities joined a virtual press conference calling out Herschel Walker’s overwhelming pattern of lies, exaggerations, and unanswered questions. 

Speakers discussed how over the past few weeks and months, story after story after story after story after story has exposed Walker’s overwhelming pattern of lies, exaggerations, and unanswered questions. Most recently, a bombshell report from The Daily Beast exposed his “previously unexamined, and particularly egregious, false claims” — including proof that Walker “claims to own companies that don’t exist.” And a report from GPB News raised “red flags” about potential “conflicts of interests” in Herschel Walker’s personal financial disclosure, which is “missing key information” and contains major “inconsistencies.” 

Download a recording of the press conference here.

“I built my company long before the pandemic began, so I know the hard work that goes into growing something from nothing and keeping it going when times are tough. So it’s a little bit of an insult when you hear somebody like Herschel Walker claim to start an upholstery business from scratch and say that he grew it into the biggest in the country, and then find out it doesn’t even exist, ” said Adam Harrell, Co-founder of Nebo Agency, an Atlanta-based marketing company. “It’s an overwhelming trend, a trend of claiming to have done things, accomplish things, own things he never has. There’s no shame in not having graduated from college. But lying to the people of Georgia — telling them you graduated in the top 1% of your class, when you never graduated at all — it’s wrong. There’s no shame in navigating the struggles of owning a business, but claiming to own a business and employ workers and balance a budget when that business and that staff and that budget doesn’t exist is…concerning. On top of all that, he’s continuing to hide these potential conflicts of interest. It just raises a lot of questions, and our state deserves better.”

“I’ve seen firsthand that you can tell a lot about a boss by how honest and forthright they are when things get challenging. Herschel Walker wants us to judge his leadership potential on his record as a business owner and employer. Well, that record shows a boss who consistently breaks his word, exaggerates success for his own gain, and puts profits over people,” said James Shackelford, a union representative for the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, Southeast Council. “Walker profited from a company that took $10 million from the Paycheck Protection Program, then laid off 90% of its employees the very next day. If Walker can’t honor his commitments as an employer and businessman, how can we expect him to honor his commitment to Georgia’s workers as a Senator?” 

“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about being in business now for a little over six years in Atlanta, that it’s important to do right by your employees and it’s important to tell the truth. But what you see with Herschel Walker is a long line of falsehoods and misinformation and a record that shows a ton of business practices that I think as Georgians, we can’t afford,” said Ryan Wilson, Co-Founder and CEO of The Gathering Spot. “He’s claimed to have businesses that simply don’t exist. He has talked about business owners in the state that have participated in the paycheck Protection Program, calling on us to be ‘ashamed’ of our participation in that program. He’s had other businesses that have had a string of defaults and liens placed against them. He suggested that the way that he will run the state is similar to the way that he has run these businesses. And that is not something that we can afford to have in Georgia.”

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