Senate candidate Herschel Walker says he's 'accountable' for alleged domestic abuse

Senate candidate Herschel Walker said in an interview on Monday that he accepts accountability for his alleged domestic abuse of his former wife. Then he claimed he had never broken the law.

Speaking with Axios, the Georgia Republican was asked about allegations by his ex-wife Cindy Grossman that he threatened her with guns and knives. Walker has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, a mental health condition believed to stem from trauma that is characterized in part by periods of memory loss. While he has in the past denied remembering the episodes of abuse, he told the outlet, “I’m always accountable to whatever I’ve ever done. And that’s what I tell people: I’m accountable to it.”

But Axios reports that Walker also claimed that he has never violated the law and that he denies the abuse allegations made by two other women, telling the outlet, “People can’t just make up and add on and say other things that’s not the truth. They want me to address things that they made up.”

In 2001, Grossman claimed in divorce filings that she’d endured “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.”

A judge granted her a protective order in 2005 after she alleged more controlling and violent behavior by Walker. Grossman’s sister said in an affidavit at the time that he had warned he was “going to shoot my sister Cindy and her boyfriend in the head.”

This August, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on a 2012 police report by one of those women in which she alleged Walker threatened to “blow her head off” and then commit suicide. No charges were filed, and Walker’s campaign told the paper that he “emphatically denies these false claims.”

But in a 2008 ABC News interview about his mental illness, Walker said he suffers from significant memory loss as part of his condition and could only discuss the events he remembers.

A campaign spokesperson did not respond immediately to an inquiry for this story.

Walker, a former professional football player who resided in Texas until recently, is one of several Republican candidates vying for the party’s nomination to challenge first-term Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) next November.

He was urged to run by former President Donald Trump, his employer during his 1980s tenure playing in the short-lived United States Football League and his 2009 appearances as a contestant on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” television show.

Though several Republican senators initially expressed deep skepticism about Walker’s background and the allegations against him, after Trump gave him his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in September, they quickly fell in line.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had reportedly opposed Walker’s candidacy over the summer, said in an October statement to Politico, “Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Senator Warnock, and help us take back the Senate. I look forward to working with Herschel in Washington to get the job done.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.