‘Unfair Assessment’: Veteran Who Served With Walz Tells CNN Rumors He Abandoned His Battalion Are Not ‘Credible’

A veteran who served with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) told CNN the rumors from Republicans that the Democratic vice presidential candidate abandoned his unit are not “credible.”

CNN anchor Brianna Keilar spoke to retired Command Sergeant Major Joseph Eustice who served with Walz in the Minnesota National Guard shortly before he left to pursue a career in politics.

Since he became the running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris , Walz has faced criticism from Republicans who claim he retired from his unit to avoid deployment to the battlefield.

Eustice noted that although he disagrees with the policies Walz implemented as governor he sees those rumors as an “unfair assessment” of his service record.

EUSTICE: Well, the accusation about him, you know, skirting his duty or running out on his battalion. I don’t find that to be credible. The timeline for the whole deployment. If to deploy, you need an AWS and a sourcing order. And those things came after he chose to retire. I will say, everyone will say that he should have known or that he knew. All we knew at the time was there was a rumor we were going to deploy. And I can tell you that when the Iraq War started, the rumor came up that every unit was going to deploy. And that does become true. But you don’t deploy on rumors if you need the AWS, which didn’t come till July, and you need the sourcing order that didn’t come till August. And If he knew, I didn’t know. I sat in the same chair as him when we got ready to deploy on our last deployment. I didn’t know any sooner really than the rest of the unit knew. So, you know, that part of the conversation, I think is baseless.

KEILAR: Joe, to be clear, you don’t see eye to eye with Walz on politics. Tell me a little bit about that and why you still thought it was important to come forward and talk about this?

EUSTICE: Well. That’s true. I don’t see eye to eye on any of his politics. I disagree with many of the things he’s enacted as governor and those things that I felt. Like I said, on a different show. I’m really not defending Tim Walz, understanding what I know about a soldier who I served. From what I know about him in this situation. Saying that he is a traitor or shirking his duty, in my opinion, is an unfair assessment of what took place. I think if you want to attack him on other levels of his record and that stuff about it, and I don’t think it’s fair to take the 24 years that he served and try to decide that he didn’t serve honorable, or he did something he shouldn’t have done. That’s just not fair.

Watch the clip above via CNN .