Tim Walz Lied About 1995 DWI Arrest During First Congressional Campaign

Tim Walz Lied About 1995 DWI Arrest During First Congressional Campaign

Is anything about presumptive Democratic VP nominee Gov. Tim Walz true?

CNN (yes, CNN!) discovered that Walz lied about his 1995 DWI during his first Congressional campaign in 2006. It turned into a DUI charge once the alcohol test came back:

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’s legal limit of 0.1 at the time.

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.

None of that was true.

The reports say otherwise:

In fact, the incident’s 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.

“Under NSP procedure, a person suspected of impaired driving is not allowed to continue driving,” Cody Thomas, a spokesman for the Nebraska State Patrol, told CNN. “In this case, the suspect was transported by the trooper and was lodged in Dawes County Jail.”

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.

Walz taught high school at the time of his DWI. The trooper smelled “a strong odor of alcohol” on his breath, leading him to request a sobriety test:

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 – well above the state’s legal limit of 0.1 at the time.

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.
His lawyer said Walz intended to use the incident as a way to educate his students on the perils of drinking and driving.

“It’s just a dangerous situation,” Walz said in a court transcript, which Alpha News, a conservative Minnesota outlet uncovered in 2022. “Not just to myself, but to others who aren’t even involved with it.”

In court, Walz’s 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.

Walz’s 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.

Fast forward to 2006.

A Republican blog alerted everyone about Walz’s DUI:

Then in early September, a local Republican blog ran the story, “Walz jailed for DUI,” based on a copy of Walz’s ticket for speeding and DUI.

Walz’s campaign disputed that he had been drunk – and claimed he had driven himself to the station. They did not mention whether or not Walz had been jailed.

The local GOP blog later posted a a copy of the police report from the incident to suggest Walz’s campaign was lying in their claims he wasn’t drunk – but no one in the local press appeared to have followed up on the report.

Walz’s then-spokesperson told a local outlet the authorities dropped the charge because none of it was true: “The 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.”

The spokesperson told another outlet that the judge dismissed the charges:

“According to Walz’s 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,” read the report in the New Ulm Journal, a local newspaper.

“He couldn’t understand what the trooper was telling him during the field sobriety test, and the trooper refused to speak up,” Salsbery said at the time.

‘The DUI charges were dropped for a reason,’ Salsbery added. “The 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’t think the trooper would have allowed that if he thought there was a problem.’”

The arresting state trooper, Nebraska State Trooper Stephen Rasgorshek, spoke out recently:

As for troubles with balancing, Rasgorshek said that the tests he conducted included the horizontal gaze nystagmus, in which the subject is asked to follow an object with his eyes. A twitching before the eyes are at 45 degrees is a reliable indication of inebriation. Walz failed it.

“We were told that having a hearing problem had nothing to do with what the eyes are doing,” Rasgorshek noted.

Walz also failed a breathalyzer. And a hospital test that followed put Walz’s blood alcohol level at .128, which was .028 over the legal limit at the time. And, considering that there was a long wait for a tow truck to haul away Walz’s car before they could head to the hospital, Rasgorshek figures Walz might have actually been at a .170 when he was stopped.

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But a lie is still a lie and that is why a long-ago drunk driving collar is still an issue. Rasgorshek, who is now retired, put forth the truth on Monday in the simplest terms.

“Saw drunk. Arrested same.”

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