See The Citation Showing Tim Walz Was ‘Jailed’ For 96 mph DUI

This is the ticket written by a state trooper for Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz when he was jailed for DUI.

The paperwork from 1995 was published by a Republican blogger when Walz first ran for Congress—after Walz’s campaign denied he had been drunk—and preserved by the Internet Archive.

But the ticket—and a file of court documents from the subsequent court case—showed that Walz, at the time a high school teacher in Nebraska, had accepted that he had been drinking before he got in his car and disputed none of the prosecution’s version of events.

The ticket, written by Nebraska State Trooper Stephen Rasgorshek, showed the key details of the case. Walz was doing 96mph when he was stopped in Alliance, Nebraska, on Highway 385 in his 1993 Mazda. It was 9.30pm on Sept. 23—a Saturday. The limit was 55mph.

This week Rasgorshek, now retired, told the Daily Beast that it was a simple case. “Saw drunk. Arrested same.” After a failed field sobriety he breathalyzed Walz, 31, and put him in the back of his radio car, then took him to the local hospital for a blood test, which Walz failed. He had a blood alcohol of .128, well over the legal limit at the time in Nebraska of 0.1. Walz, then a teacher at Alliance High School, was mugshotted at the Chadron County jail.

The following March he accepted a plea deal. In return for pleading no contest to the DUI charge, he was convicted of reckless driving. As the Beast reported on Monday, Walz took the offense seriously. His attorney said he had immediately reported the incident to his principal at Alliance High School, where he was one of the most popular and highly regarded members of the faculty. Walz had offered his resignation.

“Fortunately, the principal talked him out of resigning from school,” his attorney, Russell Harford, told the court. “He did, in fact, though, resign from his extracurricular activities… which included some coaching responsibilities.”

The defense attorney continued, “He takes the position that he's a role model for the students there. He let them down. He let himself down.”

But in 2006, a decade later, Walz’s campaign staff tried to spin a different version of events. When the DUI surfaced as he ran to oust a sitting Republican congressman in a rural district of Minnesota, Walz’s aides denied that he had been drunk and even claimed the court had thrown out the DUI and blamed the trooper.

His campaign manager Kerry Greely was quoted telling the Rochester Post Bulletin that Walz had not been drunk. She said that ear damage suffered during his continued service with an artillery unit of the Minnesota National Guard had affected his balance and impaired his ability to hear the trooper’s command.

“He couldn’t understand what the officer was saying to him,” Greely was quoted saying.

Walz’s spokesperson, Meredith Salsbery, was quoted telling NUJournal much the same thing, further contending: “The trooper refused to speak up.”

Walz himself has subsequently said that he stopped drinking after the DUI, calling it a “gut check moment.”

He has also faced accusations from Republicans, including his vice-presidential opponent JD Vance, of “stolen valor” for how he characterized his 24-year service in the National Guard. Walz quit the Guard to run for Congress and his unit was then deployed to Iraq.

Walz’s statements about his service have included claiming he carried a gun “in war,” while when he ran for Congress he said he had been deployed as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for American involvement in Afghanistan, but did not mention it was only to Italy. The Daily Beast reported how his unit remains bitterly split over his decision to retire.

Walz has hit back hard at Vance over the claims saying: “I am damn proud of my service.” His comment did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.