{"id":69396,"date":"2024-08-24T09:09:39","date_gmt":"2024-08-24T16:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/?p=69396"},"modified":"2024-08-24T09:17:38","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T16:17:38","slug":"vpotus-candidate-tim-walz-a-convicted-reckless-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/?p=69396","title":{"rendered":"VPOTUS Candidate Tim Walz, a convicted reckless driver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FVEphJ6M15Y?si=w7dxXooHWuXx5EcA\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center>\n\n\n\n<p>CNN&nbsp;\u2014 When Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz first ran for Congress in 2006, his campaign repeatedly made false statements about the details of his 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to court and police records connected to the incident, Walz admitted in court that he had been drinking when he was pulled over for driving 96 mph in a 55 mph zone in Nebraska. Walz was then transported by a state trooper to a local hospital for a blood test, showing he had a blood alcohol level of .128, well above the state\u2019s legal limit of 0.1 at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in 2006, his campaign repeatedly told the press that he had not been drinking that night, claiming that his failed field sobriety test was due to a misunderstanding related to hearing loss from his time in the National Guard. The campaign also claimed that Walz was allowed to drive himself to jail that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of that was true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A CNN KFile review of statements made by the Walz campaign at the time reveals numerous discrepancies between how the campaign described the events and the facts of what actually took place that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe DUI charge was dropped for a Reason: it wasn\u2019t true,\u201d Walz\u2019s then-campaign communications director told local news in 2006. \u201cThe trooper had him drive to the station and then leave on his own after being at the station. Tim feels bad about speeding and has paid the ticket and apologized to his family at the time it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, the incident\u2019s police report clearly states that Walz was transported by police to a local hospital for blood alcohol testing after being arrested. And this week, Nebraska state police confirmed to CNN that Walz was taken by a state trooper to jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cUnder NSP procedure, a person suspected of impaired driving is not allowed to continue driving,\u201d Cody Thomas, a spokesman for the Nebraska State Patrol, told CNN. \u201cIn this case, the suspect was transported by the trooper and was lodged in Dawes County Jail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that Walz is the Democratic nominee for vice president, renewed scrutiny is being paid to the details of his 1995 arrest and how his campaign described the incident a decade later as he launched his political career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walz has subsequently acknowledged the facts of the case, admitting during his 2018 campaign for governor of Minnesota that he had been drinking and driving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Tuesday, the Daily Beast&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/cop-i-arrested-tim-walz-for-dui-why-did-his-aide-lie-about-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">published an interview<\/a>&nbsp;with the state trooper who arrested Walz. He disputed claims that Walz had not been drinking and noted that sobriety test had nothing to do with hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Harris-Walz campaign declined to comment for this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Driving drunk at 96 mph<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the night of September 23, 1995, Walz, then a 31-year-old high school teacher, was pulled over by a Nebraska state trooper for speeding, having been clocked on radar as going 96 mph in a 55 mph zone. According to the police report, the state trooper detected a strong odor of alcohol on Walz\u2019s breath and requested he take a field sobriety test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walz failed the test and was transported by a state trooper to a local hospital for a blood test showing he had a blood alcohol level of .128 \u2013 well above the state\u2019s legal limit of 0.1 at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/wiki-tim-waltz.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"624\" height=\"468\" src=\"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/wiki-tim-waltz.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-69397\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/wiki-tim-waltz.jpg 624w, https:\/\/wikidean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/wiki-tim-waltz-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>This photo from the Dawes County Sheriff&#8217;s Office in Nebraska shows Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in 1995 following his arrest for driving under the influence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dawes County Sheriff&#8217;s Office<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walz took a plea deal, court records show, pleading guilty to reckless driving. In a court hearing in March 1996, Walz admitted that he had been drinking and driving.<br>His lawyer said Walz intended to use the incident as a way to educate his students on the perils of drinking and driving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just a dangerous situation,\u201d Walz said in a court transcript, which Alpha News, a conservative Minnesota outlet uncovered&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/alphanews.org\/court-transcript-sheds-new-light-on-walzs-dui-arrest\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">in 2022.<\/a>&nbsp;\u201cNot just to myself, but to others who aren\u2019t even involved with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In court, Walz\u2019s defense attorney said that when the state trooper started following him, Walz believed someone was chasing him and sped up out of fear that he was being pursued until the trooper turned on his police lights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walz\u2019s attorney added that he reported the incident to his school and resigned from extracurricular activities such as coaching. He offered to resign his teaching position entirely, his lawyer said, but the principal urged him to stay on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>False statements in 2006<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2006, Walz\u2019s congressional campaign offered a very different version of events in numerous statements, according to a CNN KFile review of statements to various local press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That year, Walz as a first time candidate was in a tight congressional race in the Republican-held district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then in early September, a local Republican blog ran the story, \u201cWalz jailed for DUI,\u201d based on a copy of Walz\u2019s ticket for speeding and DUI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walz\u2019s campaign disputed that he had been drunk \u2013 and claimed he had driven himself to the station. They did not mention whether or not Walz had been jailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The local GOP blog later posted a copy of the police report from the incident to suggest Walz\u2019s campaign was lying in their claims he wasn\u2019t drunk \u2013 but no one in the local press appeared to have followed up on the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walz\u2019s then campaign communications director did not return a CNN request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In another comment to a local newspaper, archived online by the liberal blog Daily Kos, Walz\u2019s campaign said he denied being drunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAccording to Walz\u2019s campaign staff, Walz denies being drunk the night of the incident. Walz was hard of hearing, a result of his years as an artillery soldier in the Army National Guard, and had trouble hearing the trooper, according to Meredith Salsbery, communications director for the Walz campaign,\u201d read the report in the New Ulm Journal, a local newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe couldn\u2019t understand what the trooper was telling him during the field sobriety test, and the trooper refused to speak up,\u201d Salsbery said at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018The DUI charges were dropped for a reason,\u2019 Salsbery added. \u201cThe judge would not have dismissed them if there were anything to them. Tim drove to the police station that night (after being stopped), and he drove home afterwards. I don\u2019t think the trooper would have allowed that if he thought there was a problem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His campaign manager told a similar story to another local paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWalz\u2019s campaign manager Kerry Greeley didn\u2019t dispute that Walz was speeding when he was pulled over that night, but she said Walz was not drunk. She attributed the misunderstanding to Walz\u2019s deafness, a condition resulting from his years of serving as an artillerist in the Army National Guard,\u201d read an article in the Post Bulletin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe couldn\u2019t understand what the officer was saying to him,\u201d Greeley said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cShe said deaf people also can have balance issues. The judge eventually threw out the DUI charges against Walz and chastised the officer for not realizing that Walz was deaf, Greeley said,\u201d the report added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe was caught speeding, he doesn\u2019t deny it and that\u2019s the end of it,\u201d she added to the Star Tribune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greeley did not respond to a request from CNN for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Walz\u2019s political career progressed, so did his explanation for his 1995 arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2018, when running for governor, Walz offered a markedly different version of events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Walz, the arrest was a life-changing moment, motivating him to change his behavior. He said he has since given up alcohol and his go-to drink is now Diet Mountain Dew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou have responsibilities to others,\u201d Gwen Walz recalled telling her husband. \u201cYou can\u2019t afford to make foolish decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNN&nbsp;\u2014 When Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz first ran for Congress in 2006, his campaign repeatedly made false statements about the details of his&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69396"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69399,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69396\/revisions\/69399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/69401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wikidean.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}