Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Vice President Kamala Harris‘s running mate, may have known he was going to deploy before he used a “backdoor process” to get around his immediate superior in order to get his retirement approved.
His superior, former Minnesota National Guard Command Sgt. Maj. Doug Julin, explained to CNN those details.
Julin said his commander and himself, of the First Brigade 34th Infantry Division combat team, received a notification of sourcing in the fall of 2004. “We were informed that we would be alerted to go to Iraq within the next upcoming year, start preparing your team, getting your team together and let’s get the process in play,” he said.
“In approximately February of 2005, my boss, commander, and the command team, we scheduled a meeting at Camp Ripley Minnesota, for a meeting, getting everybody together so all the battalion sergeant majors, battalion commanders, and their staff would get to see each other and start the team-building there … at that meeting was Gov. Tim Walz.”
After the meeting, Julin said Walz asked to speak with him, and they sat down and spoke one-on-one. Julin said he informed him that Walz would be running for Congress but hadn’t been nominated yet.
Walz filed to run for Congress on Feb. 10, 2005.
In March or April of 2005, they had another meeting at Camp Ripley, in which Walz was present. At the meeting, they spoke about what their mission would be, how they were going to do it, and how they were going to build the team.
Julin explained that Walz then told him after that meeting that he had not been nominated and that he was “going forward with the battalion.” Walz would retire in May 2005, not long after.
Now in June 2005, Julin walked into a meeting at the camp again, and was told Walz had “quit.” “The issue that had came out of this was, first of all, how did Tim Walz quit without discussing with me because I was his next level of leadership.”
“The other issue that came out of this was that the individual that approved this was two levels higher than myself in the enlisted corps and should have had Tim Walz come back to me and discuss why he was going forward or not going forward now after he already told me he was going forward,” he said.
Julin said because of Walz’s rank, he should’ve known protocol for how he was supposed to go about exiting the military. “Tim Walz knew the process and procedures, he went around me and above and beyond me … basically went in there to get somebody to back him … it was just a backdoor process.”
The unit was then alerted toward its mobilization in July 2005. Walz would later go on to win his primary in Sept. 2006, and win his congressional seat in November of that year.
Julin’s comments likely help clear the air around the process in which Walz retired as there has been confusion in the media and in the public as to whether he retired in order to avoid being deployed to Iraq.
According to Julin’s timeline, Walz would have been aware he was deploying to Iraq as he was set to retire. What isn’t known is when he filed his retirement papers, which could’ve been many months in advance.
Other soldiers who served with Walz say the negative backlash against him is “just not right.”
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“I don’t agree with a lot of his politics, but Tim Walz is a good man, and he was a good soldier,” Master Sgt. Thomas Eustice told Fox 9. “And for people to vilify him, it’s just not right.”
Either way, Walz could face more backlash in the coming months about how his 24-year military career ended.
