JUST REPORTED BY: OCCUPY DEMOCRATS
Herschel Walker under fire over ties to fraudulent veterans program
Walker, the leading Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, often boasts of his work helping service members and veterans struggling with mental health, but new revelations present a portrait of a celebrity spokesman who overstated his role in a for-profit program that is alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government.
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — Herschel Walker, the football legend and leading Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, often boasts of his work helping service members and veterans struggling with mental health.
In interviews and campaign appearances, the former Dallas Cowboy and Heisman Trophy winner takes credit for founding, co-founding and sometimes operating a program called Patriot Support. The program, he says, has taken him to military bases all over the world.
“About 15 years ago, I started a program called Patriot Support,” Walker said in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt last October. “People need to know I started a military program, a military program that treats (thousands) of soldiers a year,” he told Savannah TV station WTGS in February.
But corporate documents, court records and Senate disclosures reviewed by The Associated Press tell a more complicated story. Together they present a portrait of a celebrity spokesman who overstated his role in a for-profit program that is alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government.
The revelation marks the latest example of a far more complex reality that lies beneath the carefully curated autobiography Walker has pitched to voters.
Walker’s campaign would not make him available for an interview.
“So let me get this straight — you are demonizing Herschel for being the face of an organization for 14 years that has helped tens of thousands of soldiers suffering from mental illness,” Walker spokeswoman Mallory Blount said in an emailed statement that also criticized the media.
At a campaign stop Saturday, Walker said the allegations against the program were a “concern” but added that he wasn’t sure they were true. Then he changed the subject.
“I’m winning this election. People know I’m winning it,” Walker told reporters.
Even before entering the race, Walker drew attention for his past mental health struggles, as well as allegations that he threatened his ex-wife’s life. He’s dramatically inflated his record as a businessman, as the AP previously reported. And his claim that he graduated at the top of his class from the University of Georgia, where he led the Bulldogs to a 1980 championship, was also untrue. He didn’t graduate, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported.
Political candidates often gild their story and, so far, in the race for the Republican Senate nomination with the backing of former President Donald Trump, Walker’s troubled background, falsehoods and contradictions have not carried a price. But if he wins Tuesday’s primary, in which he holds a dominating lead, Democrats are likely to highlight unflattering parts of his story in what is shaping up as one of the fiercest fall contests, with control of the U.S. Senate in the balance.
“Walker has a troubled record, much of which Republicans have already been sounding the alarm on,” said J.B. Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, a campaign arm for Senate Democrats that pays for millions of dollars in attack ads. “A lot of the discussion on his record will carry over into the general election because voters deserve to know the truth.”
Well before his candidacy, Walker received plaudits for his work with Patriot Support. His visits to bases were touted in military press releases. And in 2014, as a celebrity contestant on a Food Network game show, Walker won a $50,000 prize to donate to his charity of choice, Patriot Support.
But Patriot Support is not a charity. It’s a for-profit program specifically marketed to veterans that is offered by Universal Health Services, one of the largest hospital chains in the U.S. Walker wasn’t the program’s founder, either. It was created 11 years before Universal Health Services says it hired Walker as a spokesman, which paid him a salary of $331,000 last year.
And the $50,000 prize he earned from the Food Network didn’t go to Patriot Support, but was instead donated to a Paralympic Veterans program in Patriot Support’s name.
Court documents, meanwhile, offer a far more troubling picture of its care for veterans and service members.
A sprawling civil case brought against Universal Health Services by the the Department of Justice and nearly two dozen states alleges that Patriot Support was part of a broader effort by the company to defraud the government.
Prosecutors allege Universal Health Services and its affiliates aggressively pushed those with government-sponsored insurance into inpatient mental health care to drive revenue. That’s because, unlike typical private insurers, government plans do not limit the duration of hospital stays for psychiatric care so long as specific criteria are met, making such patients more profitable, the government alleged.
To achieve this end, the company pushed staff at its mental health facilities to misdiagnose patients and falsify documents in order to hospitalize those who did not require it, according to court records. In other cases, they failed to discharge those who no longer needed hospitalization, according to the DOJ.
A lengthy 2016 investigation by the website BuzzFeed included interviews with former patients, including a veteran, who said they went to Universal Health Services seeking a consultation or counseling only to find themselves held in inpatient care, sometimes against their will.
Veterans and service members were a specific focus, according to court documents.
The company hired “military liaisons” to visit bases and develop relationships with military medical staff, treatment facility commanders and clinicians, court documents state.
“To maximize the flow of military patients, UHS engaged in an aggressive campaign ... to market its ‘Patriot Support program,’” a company whistleblower who ran the admissions program at a Utah hospital stated in a 2014 court document.
As a celebrity spokesman, Walker was part of the public relations blitz.
Universal Health Services reached a $122 million settlement in 2020 with the Department of Justice and the coalition of states. The company denies government’s allegations and said it agreed to the settlement to “avoid the continuing costs and uncertainty of continued litigation.”
Jane Crawford, a spokeswoman for the company, also denied the whistleblower’s account of an aggressive marketing campaign to draw service members into the company’s Patriot Support program. She also said some of the alleged conduct occurred before Universal Health Services purchased a group of hospitals operated by Ascend Health in 2012. Ascend Health ran a similar veterans’ program called Freedom Care, which Walker was also a spokesman for.
Though Walker touts his role with Patriot Support on the campaign trail, there’s no suggestion he was directly involved in any wrongdoing at the hospitals. The company declined to renew his contract this year and a detailed biography of Walker was removed from the Patriot Support website.
“Herschel Walker served as national spokesperson for our Anti-Stigma campaign from 2010 to 2021,” Crawford, the company spokeswoman, said in a statement. “As a mental health advocate, Mr. Walker shared his personal journey to raise awareness and encourage others to seek help. He is no longer contracted with Universal Health Services.”
Walker acknowledged on Saturday that he didn’t create Patriot Support. But he told reporters that he did start Ascend Health’s Freedom Care program in 2007.
But government filings show Freedom Care was developed by the company in 2006, a year before Walker claimed to have created it. Meanwhile, an archived company website lists Walker as a spokesman. And a U.S. military news release about the program says Walker didn’t join until 2008 — two years after it was developed.
Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican strategist who founded his company in Georgia, said Walker is “like a God” in the state and doubted whether anything would hurt his chances in a general election contest with Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is Georgia’s first Black senator.
“There are still kids who will wear Herschel Walker’s football jerseys some 40 years after he played for the University of Georgia. So negative information will be heard with a heavy dose of skepticism,” Ayres said. “That doesn’t mean that some allegations won’t penetrate somewhat, but they won’t do anywhere near as much damage as to a normal candidate.”
ADDED:
WORDS THAT COME TO MIND: DEAD BEAT, LIAR, STALKER, CARPET BAGGER, FRAUD....HERSHEL WALKER FITS THE tRUMPER MOLD!
Is This Seriously Who Republicans Want Representing Georgia Instead Of Raphael Warnock?
Herschel Walker guaranteed he’d repay $600k in pizza franchise loans. So far, he hasn’t
Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/article258250315.html#storylink=cpy
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Another Cringey Performance Calls Into Question Competence Of Favored Georgia Republican
Walker has indicated he won’t be participating in any primary debates. In light of the investigations about his past, perhaps he doesn’t want to face tough questions.
Hershel Walker's Senate Bid Has Some Georgia Republicans Shook
HERSCHEL WALKER - REPUBLICAN DISASTER GEORGIA
A Herschel Walker candidacy is a total nightmare for Senate Republicans
Updated 10:12 AM ET, Wed August 25, 2021
(CNN)The news that former NFL star Herschel Walker has registered to vote in Georgia is terrible news for Senate Republicans hoping to retake the majority next November.
- He hasn't lived in the state for a very long time. Moving back to the state to run for office opens Walker up to charges of carpetbagging -- and he has no ready answer for that.
- He's been accused of threatening behavior. Walker has been open about his diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder and the struggles it has caused him, including writing a book about his experiences. But a recent AP report that went through Walker's business and divorce records reveal troubling -- and previously unreported -- behavior. "The documents detail accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wife, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior." (Walker didn't respond to the AP's request for comment on the report.)
- He's never been a candidate before. A Senate race is a very tough place to make a maiden campaign. And that goes double when you are talking about what will likely be one of the most closely watched and expensive Senate races in the country. Walker will now be under a very bright light from the second he made clear his candidacy -- and if past is prologue, he could struggle at times under such close scrutiny.
Police records complicate Herschel Walker's recovery story
Police in Irving, Texas, once confiscated a gun from Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker following a domestic disturbance — because, they said, the former football star talked about having “a shoot-out with police.”
The Associated PressWASHINGTON -- One warm fall evening in 2001, police in Irving, Texas, received an alarming call from Herschel Walker’s therapist. The football legend and current Republican Senate candidate in Georgia was “volatile,” armed and scaring his estranged wife at the suburban Dallas home they no longer shared.
Officers took cover outside, noting later that Walker had "talked about having a shoot-out with police.” Then they ordered the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and onetime Dallas Cowboy to step out of the home, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Much of what happened that day at the $1.9 million mansion remains shrouded from view because the report, which Irving police released to the AP only after ordered to do so by the Texas attorney general’s office, was extensively redacted.
What is clear, though, is that Walker's therapist, Jerry Mungadze, a licensed counselor in Texas with a history of embracing practices that experts in the field say are outside the mainstream, played a pivotal role in extracting the former player from the situation.
The incident adds another layer to Walker’s already turbulent personal history, which includes his acknowledged struggles with mental health, violent outbursts and accusations that he repeatedly threatened his ex-wife. And it will test voters’ acceptance of Walker’s assertion that he has long since been a changed person.
After calling police to the gated subdivision where Walker's wife lived, Mungadze rushed to the scene and talked to Walker for at least 30 minutes to calm him down, according to the Sept. 23, 2001, report. In the end, police confiscated a 9mm Sig Sauer handgun from Walker's car and placed his address on a “caution list" because of his “violent tendencies.” But they declined to seek charges or make an arrest. Walker's wife filed for divorce three months later.
Though causing some initial misgivings, Walker's past has done little to deter Republican support for his candidacy. He has been championed aggressively by former President Donald Trump, a longtime friend, with other top Republicans eventually joining the fold.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his No. 2, Sen. John Thune, both endorsed Walker in October after early concerns about his history of domestic violence. Last week, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, tweeted that Walker would be a champion of conservative values and is “living proof that hard work and determination pay off.”
Walker's campaign dismissed the newly surfaced information and blamed the media for highlighting it.
“The very same media who praised Herschel for his transparency nearly two decades ago are now running ... stories, stereotyping, attacking, and going so far as to question his diagnosis," Mallory Blount, a Walker spokesperson, said in a statement. "It’s shameful and is why people don’t trust the media.”
The campaign declined to offer an updated health assessment or grant a request for an interview. There have been no reports of violence involving Walker in the past decade.
Mungadze, too, declined to comment, but has indicated that he is no longer treating Walker. Still, their relationship is part of the story as the former University of Georgia and NFL football star turns to politics.
Walker and Mungadze first met in the early 1980s when both ran college track. They didn't become friends until after Mungadze, who holds a doctorate of philosophy in counselor education, diagnosed Walker with dissociative identity disorder following a separate 2001 episode in which Walker says he sped around suburban Dallas, hearing voices and fantasizing about executing a man who was late delivering a car he had purchased. Psychologists and counselors generally do not have medical degrees.
A former pastor, Mungadze has held a counselor's license in Texas for over three decades and offers himself as an expert in treating dissociative identity disorder, which was once known as multiple personality disorder.
His professional and academic writings lean heavily into the occult, exorcism and possession by demons, which he called a “theological and sociological reality" in a 2000 article “Is It Dissociation or Demonization?” that was published in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity.
In one method of analysis he has pioneered, which experts have singled out as unscientific, patients are asked to color in a drawing of the brain, with Mungadze drawing conclusions about their mental state from the colors they choose. In 2013, he told the televangelist Benny Hinn that he can use the drawings to tell whether someone has been “demonized.”
“I can tell them what spirit they have and what it’s doing in their life,” he said on Hinn’s television show.
His 1990 doctoral thesis for the University of North Texas argues that traditional healers in his native Zimbabwe are better positioned to treat those who claim to be possessed by “ancestral spirits” than providers of Western medicine.
And he was also featured in a 2014 British TV documentary as a practitioner of gay conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice that attempts to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ people.
“It’s really disturbing that a prominent individual like Walker would be seeing someone who just looks like the most dubious caregiver in terms of using methods that I’ve never heard of and never seen any published literature on,” Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said while referring to Mungadze's practice of diagnosing patients based on how they colored in a drawing of the brain.
Walker has at times been open about his struggle with mental illness, writing at length about it in his 2008 book, “Breaking Free." Mungadze, whom Walker has called “one of my best friends," wrote the book's foreword.
The book details years of struggle before an eventual diagnosis by Mungadze. Walker describes himself dealing with as many as a dozen personalities — or “alters” — that he had constructed as a defense against bullying he suffered as a stuttering, overweight child.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes the disorder as “alternating between multiple identities,” leaving a person with “gaps in memory of everyday events.” It notes that men with the disorder often “exhibit more violent behavior rather than amnesia.”
“It’s very intensive treatment,” said Bethany Brand, a clinical psychologist and professor at Towson University, who helped write guidelines for diagnosing the disorder. “They are often quite symptomatic and can relapse, even after a successful course of treatment, if they are under enough stress.”
Comparing his condition to a “broken leg,” Walker wrote that Mungadze assured him “it was possible to achieve emotional stability based on the approach and methods he had developed.”
By Mungadze's account it wasn't easy. In a 2011 Playboy Magazine profile of Walker, Mungadze said he had to call police to his office during one therapy session with Walker and his wife.
“He threatened to kill her, myself and himself. I called 911, and the police came," Mungadze said. According to the article, the incident ended with Walker hitting a door and breaking his fist.
A review of court records and police reports documents a far more turbulent path than portrayed in Walker's book, which was framed as a turnaround story.
About a year into his treatment, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader told Irving police in May 2002 that she believed Walker had been lurking outside her house. The woman said she had a “confrontation” with him roughly a year earlier, which led to Walker making threatening phone calls and “having her house watched,” according to a police report. The threats subsided, but after Walker spotted her outside a Four Seasons resort in Irving, she told police that he followed her as she drove home. The woman told police she was “very frightened” of Walker, but asked them not to contact him because it would “only make the problem worse.” She declined to comment for this story.
Walker's ex-wife has said that she was a repeated target of his abuse.
Now going by the name Cindy Grossman, she described violent outbursts in their divorce proceedings, telling of “physically abusive and threatening behavior.” When his book was released, she told ABC News that at one point during their marriage, her husband pointed a pistol at her head and said, “I’m going to blow your ... brains out.”
Mungadze served as a court approved mediator after Grossman filed for divorce in December 2001.
She returned to court in 2005 for a protective order after Walker repeatedly voiced a desire to kill her and her boyfriend, according to court records.
Walker “stated unequivocally that he was going to shoot my sister Cindy and her boyfriend in the head,” her sister later said in an affidavit, which the AP first reported last July. Not long after making the threat, Walker confronted Grossman in public, according to court filings, which indicate he “slowly drove by in his vehicle, pointed his finger at (Grossman) and traced (her) with his finger as he drove.”
A judge granted the protective order and stripped Walker of his right to carry firearms for a period of time. Grossman did not respond to a request for comment at a number currently listed for her.
In 2012, a woman named Myka Dean told Irving police that Walker "lost it" when she tried to end an “on-off-on-off” relationship with him, which she said had lasted for 20 years. Walker, she told officers, threatened to wait outside her apartment and “blow her head off,” according to a January 2012 police report.
Dean, who died in 2019, told police she didn't want to get Walker in trouble. But the officer decided to document the incident because of the “extreme threats.”
Records filed with the federal Securities Exchange Commission show she was once part of a business venture with Walker, holding an ownership stake in a company he led called Renaissance Man Inc., which sold an aloe-based health drink. Her mother and stepfather also served on the company's board.
Walker's campaign said that he “emphatically denies these false claims" and is on good terms with Dean's parents, who support his campaign.
“This is the first any of us knew about this. We are very proud of the man Herschel Walker has become," Diane McKnight, Dean's mother, said in a statement provided by Walker's campaign. "We love him, pray for him and wish we lived in Georgia so we could vote him into the United States Senate.”
———
This story was first published on Feb. 10, 2022. It was updated on Feb. 11, 2022, to make clear that U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s therapist, Jerry Mungadze, holds a doctorate of philosophy in counselor education.
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Will Hershel Walker's Troubled Past Keep Him Out of Georgia's Senate Race?
Herschel Walker guaranteed he’d repay $600k in pizza franchise loans. So far, he hasn’t
BY NICK WOOTEN UPDATED FEBRUARY 12, 2022 2:42 PM
Play VideoDuration 3:09
Herschel Walker speaks at the 2020 RNC Former NFL, USFL and University of Georgia running
Herschel Walker gave a speech for his friend and former boss, Donald Trump, on. the first night at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Aug. 24, 2020.
BY REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker and a business partner have failed to repay $625,000 in loans used to fund a pizza franchise, court records reviewed by the Ledger-Enquirer and McClatchy News show.
The former NFL star and Brandon Scrushy, president of Zoner’s Pizza, Waffles and Wings, personally guaranteed the repayment of two loans issued by a Texas bank. Two Georgia counties used a Texas court judgment to place a lien of more than half a million dollars against Walker, Scrushy and the business to try to get them to pay. Fulton County Superior Court filed the lien in December, and Johnson County, where Walker’s hometown of Wrightsville is located, recorded the lien later that month. The lien will remain in the counties’ records until the loans are paid off, and the Texas bank could seek further action to collect the debt. The ruling is the latest in a series of issues for Walker, who hopes to unseat incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in this year’s midterm election. Recent polling from Quinnipiac University shows him leading Warnock, 49% to 48%. Attempts to reach D. Woodard Glenn P.C, the Dallas attorneys who handled the Texas loans lawsuits, were unsuccessful. An Atlanta attorney who handled proceedings in Fulton and Johnson counties said he was not permitted to comment on the matter.
In a statement to the Ledger-Enquirer and McClatchy News, Walker’s communications director Mallory Blount did not say if Walker would pay off the debt. “Herschel is a minor investor and supplier for Zoners Pizza who allowed his likeness to be used in marketing materials. Like many other small businesses across America, Zoners was hit hard by the pandemic. Herschel is not a decision-maker in the company, but trusts that they are resolving this issue.” Walker’s legal issues with Zoner’s were first reported by the Associated Press as part of an investigation into the Republican’s business dealings and personal life. The AP found that Walker exaggerated his business success and alarmed business partners with unpredictable behavior. Walker also threatened the life of his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, AP reported. THE LAWSUITS AND COURT RULINGS Both Walker and Scrushy agreed to repay the loans, which were issued in 2018 and amended in 2019 by Veritex Community Bank, according to two lawsuits filed in the 14th District Court in Dallas County.
Veritex filed the first lawsuit over a roughly $500,000 loan in September 2020. A second suit over a roughly $100,000 loan was filed in June 2021. Vertex accused Zoner’s of defaulting on both loans and said Walker, Scrushy and Zoner’s declined to repay despite agreeing to do so. Walker avoided involvement in the Texas lawsuits. Security guards would not allow legal documents to be personally delivered to Walker, who lives in a gated community in Westlake, a town northwest of Fort Worth. Attempts to contact Walker by phone were unsuccessful, court records show. Court documents state Walker and his co-defendants failed to appear in court to answer the charges in the lawsuits. The courts ruled in favor of the bank in both cases, and ordered Walker, Scrushy and Zoner’s Restaurant Group LLC to pay back the loans as well as attorney fees and other related costs. Atlanta attorney Michael F. Hanson filed a civil case in Fulton County Superior Court in November 2021 to enforce the judgment on the $500,000 loan case. Judge Rachelle Carnesale enacted a lien against Walker, Scrushy and Zoner’s Restaurant Group. The same lien was filed in Johnson County in late December. Veritex has not asked Fulton or Johnson County courts to enforce the second Texas ruling. WALKER’S OTHER BUSINESS TROUBLES Zoner’s Restaurant Group also owes just over $6,000 in unpaid taxes in Montgomery County, Texas, north of Houston. Other Zoner’s franchise groups haven’t paid taxes in other Texas and Georgia counties. The largest owed amount is just over $10,000 in Gwinnett County. Walker’s name is not mentioned in those documents. Walker’s exact role in the business was not outlined in the Texas lawsuits, though documents and Walker’s previous public statements suggest the relationship is close. A December 2021 financial disclosures report Walker filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission states that he owns non-public Zoner’s stock worth an “unascertainable” amount. He earns less than $201 a year in income from the stock, according to the report. Zoner’s has 15 locations in four states, more than half of them in Georgia. Each location serves Walker’s chicken and waffles, according to the company’s website. Walker owns a chicken business that distributes its products nationwide. Walker is referred to as an owner and majority stockholder in several news stories about various Zoner’s locations. He identified himself as an owner of more than “two dozen restaurants across the country, including Zoner’s Pizza, Wings and Waffles” during a speaking event in Fort Irwin, Calif., in 2019. The statement from Walker’s campaign about his arrangement with Zoner’s mirrors the relationship business associates described to the Associated Press in July about Walker and his chicken processing plants. The associates claimed that Walker is just a licensing partner who lends his name to the enterprise — much like former President Donald Trump did with many products. Walker and the former president maintain a close relationship, dating back to the short-lived United States Football League of the 1980s. Walker, a 1980 College Football National Champion and 1982 Heisman Trophy Winner as the star running back for the University of Georgia, played for the New Jersey Generals. The team came under Trump’s ownership after the 1983 season. Trump endorsed Walker’s Senate bid in September 2021.
Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/article258250315.html#storylink=cpy
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