Herschel Walker denies report he paid for woman’s abortion

Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker is denying a report that he paid a woman in 2009 to abort a child the two conceived.

The Daily Beast on Monday evening reported Walker urged the woman to get an abortion and reimbursed her $700 for the procedure, saying the news outlet spoke to the woman, whom they did not identify, and obtained a bank receipt of Walker’s check and a get-well card he sent. 

“It is a flat-out lie, and now you know how important this seat is,” Walker said on Fox News’s “Hannity” shortly after the story broke.

“This seat is very important, they’ll do anything to win the seat, lie, because they want to make it about everything else except for the true problems that we have in this country is, there’s inflation, the border wide open, crime, they don’t want to talk about that,” he continued.

The Daily Beast said the woman also provided proof of her romantic relationship with Walker. It added that it independently corroborated details of the story with a close friend of the woman who claimed to take care of her in the days following the alleged abortion on Sept. 12, 2009.

The Hill has not verified The Daily Beast’s report.

In a written statement on Tuesday morning, Walker, who is a vocal opponent of abortion, said he plans to sue The Daily Beast for defamation.

Walker’s adult son, Christian Walker, took to Twitter to lay into his father Monday evening.

“I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us,” Christian Walker tweeted. “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.”

“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability,” Christian Walker wrote in a second tweet. “But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.”

Minutes later, Herschel Walker tweeted, “I LOVE my son no matter what.”

The GOP nominee faced criticism earlier this year for not previously disclosing the fact he had fathered three additional children. He also faces allegations of domestic abuse against a former partner.

Walker is running in what is expected to be one of the closest Senate races in November’s midterm elections, with polls showing him neck-and-neck with incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).

When asked about The Daily Beast’s report, Warnock reiterated to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter that his stance on abortion remained the same.

“I’ll let the pundits decide how they think it will impact the race,” Warnock said. “But I have been consistent in my view that a patient’s room is too narrow and cramped for space for a woman and the government. My view on that has not changed.”

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Chris Hartline in a statement said the story is a “nonsense” distraction from issues like high inflation and a surge of migrants at the border.

“Democrats are losing in Georgia and are on the verge of losing the majority, so they and their media allies are doing what they always do — attack Republicans with innuendo and lies,” Hartline said. “Democrats and the media have tried to stir up nonsense about what has or hasn’t happened in Herschel Walker’s past because they want to distract from what’s happening in the present.”