Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee from Georgia for the U.S. Senate, confirmed that he has two more previously unknown children, adding another “secret” child that the former football star admitted to earlier this week.
Walker now says he has four kids, only one of whom was previously known.
Walker’s disclosure is the second time this week the former star professional football player, who has been repeatedly publicly critical of African American absentee fathers, has been forced to admit he had children out of wedlock after media reports of their existence.
Until earlier this week, Walker, whose candidacy to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, has been heavily backed by former President Donald Trump, had only publicly mentioned his 22-year-old son Christian Walker.
On Tuesday, The Daily Beast revealed Walker had a “secret” 10-year-old son he hasn’t played an active role in raising.
On Thursday morning, The Daily Beast revealed he had a third son, who is 13 years old now, out of wedlock. In the same article, the outlet also reported Walker has a now-adult daughter who he had when he was about 20 years old and a star running back on the University of Georgia football team.
Walker’s campaign told CNBC on Thursday that the ages of the children as reported by The Daily Beast were correct.
In a statement released by his campaign Thursday, Walker claimed he had not told voters about his other children because it would expose them to unwanted attention during a political race. The campaign did not respond to CNBC’s question asking how many women had children by Walker.
“I have four children. Three sons and a daughter,” Walker said in the statement.
“They’re not ‘undisclosed’ — they’re my kids. I support them all and love them all. I’ve never denied my children, I confirmed this when I was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports Fitness & Nutrition,” he said.
Walker added: “I just chose not to use them as props to win a political campaign. What parent would want their child involved in garbage, gutter politics like this?”
“Saying I hide my children because I don’t discuss them with reporters to win a campaign? That’s outrageous. I can take the heat, that’s politics — but leave my kids alone,” Walker said.
It is highly unusual, but not unheard of, for U.S. political candidates not to identify the children they have when running for office.
In a 2020 interview, Walker, who is Black, said, “I want to apologize to the African American community because the fatherless home is a major, major problem.”
Months earlier, in another interview, Walker had said men need to become “fathers of those fatherless” children in neighborhoods with kids whose dads were not present in their lives.
The disclosures about Walker’s heretofore unknown kids come as he continues to be criticized for making disputed claims about his business record and other aspects of his life.
On Monday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Walker had said in speeches and statements that he had worked with Cobb County, Georgia, police, and also claimed to have been an FBI agent.
“I worked for law enforcement, y’all didn’t know that either?” Walker said in 2019. “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?”
Walker is not, nor has he ever been an FBI agent.
The newspaper said that Cobb County police reported having no record of involvement with him, and that the FBI did not respond to questions about Walker.
A campaign spokeswoman told the Journal-Constitution that Walker “has supported and worked with law enforcement for years, including speaking to police about mental health, leading women’s self-defense training, participating in the FBI Academy at Quantico.”
The spokeswoman also said Walker “was an honorary deputy in Cobb County along with three other Georgia counties but did not specify which ones,” the newspaper reported.
The Washington Post on Wednesday noted that Walker’s campaign in December deleted the false claim that he graduated from college.
In April, The Daily Beast published a story titled, “Herschel Walker Claims to Own Companies That Don’t Exist,” which it said exposed “previously unexamined, and particularly egregious, false claims” by the candidate.