Stolen Valor & the 2024 Election

At its surface, Stolen Valor is a legal term used to describe people who claim gallant military awards -- like the Purple Heart or Medal of Honor -- they did not earn in an effort to gain money, property or other tangible benefits, according to a 2013 congressional act.

But the phrase seems to have inhabited a broader meaning and gained a foothold in the public consciousness in recent years, one that has been sometimes divisive, but also critical to identifying when public figures might be embellishing or outright lying about their service records.

On this episode, we talk to three experts about Stolen Valor, the historic intertwining nature of service and politics -- and ultimately what it might mean for veterans looking to engage in the democratic process this election. We also look at how these fights over service brew and what they may mean for voters, too.

Additional Resources

• Federal Voting Assistance Program
• Vote.org
• Veterans for All Voters

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Editor’s note: this episode was updated to reflect Gov. Walz rank upon retirement.

Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Gov. Tim Walz, FOX10 Investigates, C-SPAN, Sen. JD Vance, Todd Connor, Anthony Anderson, Drew F. Lawrence, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky

Drew F. Lawrence 

At its surface, Stolen Valor is a legal term used to describe people who claim gallant military awards – like the Purple Heart or Medal of Honor – they did not earn in an effort to gain money, property or other tangible benefits, according to a 2013 Congressional act. But the phrase seems to have inhabited a broader meaning and gained a foothold in the public consciousness in recent years, one that has been sometimes divisive, but also critical to identifying when public figures might be embellishing or outright lying about their service records.

FOX10 Investigates 

Tonight on FOX10 investigates. He is a Republican candidate for Arizona House, but now controversy surrounds his military service record. And Republicans in northeastern Arizona have some questions for Steve Slaton, accusing him of Stolen Valor.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Steve Slaton lost Arizona’s state Republican primary in late July amid accusations that not only did he lie about his service, but allegedly altered his discharge documents to show Vietnam combat he never participated in. As of this recording, his website is still up and it claims that Slaton served as a co-pilot in a Cobra Attack Helicopter during Vietnam. Slaton did serve in Korea, but his claims to have been deployed to the Vietnam conflict – as well as being a pilot – were found to be false. And a bevy of veterans from multiple generations of war called him out on it publicly.

Anthony Anderson 

Steve Slaton in Arizona, he was running on a Republican ticket. It was a primary. He was running against several other Republicans. It was two veterans running against each other, and the one veteran he was running against was actually a combat veteran that served in Afghanistan.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Anthony Anderson. He’s an Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He founded Guardian of Valor to investigate and report on instances of embellished or false military service in an effort to protect the honorable nature of military awards and the often hard-fought sacrifices they entail. In the months leading up to the election, Anderson dug into Slaton’s claims, even going as far as contacting pilots who actually did serve in Vietnam and pinning down the exact helicopter Slaton said he flew, which was actually shot down, Anderson told me.

Anthony Anderson 

Well, Steve Slaton claimed to be a Vietnam combat vet, served in Vietnam, claimed to have been a cobra pilot. Come to find out, none of that was true. And I think what it was is Republican against Republican, he was trying to make his record better if not the same as the Republican he was running against, because he thinks in the public's eyes, if he's just, ‘oh, I just served in Korea, I never saw combat and this guy I'm running against saw combat, they're more than likely to vote for him.

Drew F. Lawrence 

On this episode, we talk to three experts about Stolen Valor, the historic intertwining nature of service and politics – and ultimately what it might mean for veterans looking to engage in the democratic process this election. We also look at how these fights over service brew and what they may mean for voters, too. For Military.com, my name is Drew Lawrence. It is September 27th. And this is Fire Watch. In 2016 then-Congressman Tim Walz sat down for an interview with C-SPAN alongside Republican Chris Gibson, a former colonel who deployed several times to combat and was awarded the Purple Heart.

C-SPAN 

Congressman Tim Walz, also a member of the Armed Service Committee and Veterans Affairs, Democrat of Minnesota, highest ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress. Enlisted in the Army National Guard at 17 and retired 24 years later as Command Sergeant Major and served with his battalion in Operating [sic] Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Walz, now the Democratic pick for Vice President of the United States, acknowledged the host after the brief – but only partially correct – rundown of his service. Walz retired as a master sergeant, though he did at one point serve as his battalion’s provisional command sergeant major. He did not complete the course requirements needed by the Army to hold that rank upon retirement. He also never served in Afghanistan or any combat zone, but instead was deployed to Italy in support of those operations. Minutes later in the interview, he said this:

Gov. Tim Walz 

My Guard unit backfilled to Europe to provide the security mission as the 173rd moved to Afghanistan. They rotated back, our Guard unit moves home, many of those same soldiers deployed for 22 months right after that.

Drew F. Lawrence 

The 22-month deployment he was referencing was a taxing one that his Guard unit did to Iraq without him. In 2005, Walz made the decision to retire from the Guard and run for Congress where he championed several veterans and troop issues. But he never deployed to Iraq, which drew ire from some of those who served with him and did go to Iraq. And it was further muddled in recent months by ambiguous timelines about when he dropped his retirement packet, if it was before he knew about the deployment to Iraq, and the often hard and personal decisions that those timelines bring. Then there was this from a gubernatorial campaign speech in 2018:

Gov. Tim Walz 

I'll tell you what I have been doing. I've been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks we can do CDC, research, we can make sure we don't have reciprocal carry among states, and we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Walz’ Republican opponent in the vice presidential race, JD Vance – a senator from Ohio and a veteran who served four years as a public affairs Marine and deployed to Iraq for six months – has used these statements as a cudgel against the Minnesota governor.

Sen. JD Vance 

What really bothers me about Tim Walz: It's not even the positions that he's taken though, certainly he has been a far left radical. You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz as a Marine who served his country in uniform when the United States Marine Corps, when the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq, to serve my country? I did it. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably and I'm very proud of that service. When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact that he's been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Both candidates were honorably discharged from the military, but the mudslinging and statements measured against the complicated narrative of service and a life lived have made it sensitive to parse. Walz served for 24 years in the Guard – and has responded to criticism by saying this:

Gov. Tim Walz 

These guys are evening attacking me, for my record of service. And I just want to say: I’m proud to have served my country and I always will be…and I firmly believe you should never degenerate another person’s service record. To anyone brave enough to put on that uniform for our great country, including my opponent, I just have a few simple words: thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Drew F. Lawrence 

At the same time, veterans criticized Vance for deploying to a combat zone, but never seeing combat – something, I should note, he hasn’t claimed. When I spoke to Anderson, the Guardian of Valor founder, we talked about how these criticisms revealed a self imposed hierarchy in the veteran community, now being played out on the national political stage. If you didn’t deploy, you’re not good enough. If you did deploy, but didn’t see combat, you’re not good enough. If you did see combat, but it wasn’t the right type, you still might not be good enough. Yeah, and it's, it's interesting, because with Senator JD Vance and Governor Tim Walz, who are on the two major tickets as vice presidents, you know, I think there was a brief naive hope, at least among my friends in the veteran community, that having two veterans, especially with enlisted backgrounds, or running for those positions, would bring positive spotlight to the community. But instead, it seems it's kind of nationalized, this hierarchy that you're talking about, this cannibalization that we the veteran community sometimes does. You know, why do you think that is?

Anthony Anderson 

You know it's to me, that's a big enigma. I don't know why. You know, we police our own, we always have, but sometimes we take that too far. It turns into attacks against each other, like with the Stolen Valor thing, they'll take Stolen Valor, they'll use it as a weapon. I have tried to make people understand that there's a difference between embellishment, Stolen Valor and just some off the cuff remark that is made, that you may not be aware of. With JD Vance and Walz, people online comparing the records, they would post up things about JD Vance that weren't true. They would post up stuff about Walz that wasn't true…I posted both of their records. I said, ‘Look, here's their awards, here's their ranks when they retired, this is the facts.' And people would still post...I don't understand why we do it. It's a big question for me too.

Drew F. Lawrence 

The public discussion of records can be traced to the availability of the records themselves. Veterans know that when you join the service, a long paper trail of what you did, where you went and how you did it begins to pile up. And those records are – for the most part – publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. Do you see people that you report on trying to deny your research when they’re called out for Stolen Valor?

Anthony Anderson 

Most of the time they don't, because they can't. I've had it happen probably twice, and the most recent was the Steve Slaton case out of Arizona. He tried to say that I stole his identity and that I got his records illegally. And that's because most people don't understand what FOIA is and how FOIA works, and that even though your records are your records, they're really not your records. They belong to the government.

Drew F. Lawrence 

What much of the public and apparently some politicians who fib about their records don’t account for, is that the military is made up of all kinds of service. Some, like Vance, served for one enlistment. Others served longer. Many were in support roles during the Global War on Terror – they too may have seen combat, or not. Others never deployed. Most of that is not by the veterans’ choice – you go where the big military tells you to. But the great equalizer is that all veterans at one point raised their hand to support and defend the Constitution — signing a blank check payable up to and including one’s life. Is that enough? Going back to Senator Vance and Governor Walz. You know, neither of them were these door kickers or members of Seal Team Six or Delta or anything like that. And I'm wondering, do you think that their services are a bit more representative of the average veteran in America?

Anthony Anderson 

I do, because if you look back over the past 20 years, Tim Walz served in the National Guard. The National Guard was deployed more during the 20 years that we've been at war in the Global War on Terror than they ever have before. I mean, you know, there were National Guard units out there running half the country sometimes, and they played a bigger role, and they play a bigger role now. Walz who deployed to Italy, and then with JD Vance, who was an active duty Marine, who deployed to Iraq, even though neither one ever actually saw combat, I think they represent a broader spectrum of the American veteran, and I think that's why each one draws their own side, their own part of the veteran community. And I think that's why there's been such an uproar about who did what, who said what, who served where and when, and trying to – myself – trying to stay down the middle and stick to the facts.

Drew F. Lawrence 

These intricacies within the veteran community are often foreign to many Americans. A very small percentage of the American public has served and that number is diminishing as the wave of veterans of WWII and Vietnam pass away. It has led to a divide between the military and civilian communities. That divide also brings misunderstanding of service and in part enables some of the attacks against our own that the veteran community sometimes engages in, especially on the political stage.

Todd Connor 

It's very corrosive. Americans trust veterans, and it's incumbent on the most visible amongst the community of veterans, including the two vice presidential nominees, to not squander that for personal gain. It's a great trend to see veterans running for office, as long as they don't exploit it for personal gain.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Todd Connor. He’s the founder of Bunker Labs, which is an entrepreneurship organization that helps military veterans start businesses, and more recently, the founder of Veterans for All Voters, which is a non-partisan project to reform election systems in an effort to energize voting participation for veterans and the general public. He’s also a Navy veteran.

Todd Connor 

People that are not connected to the military community tend to create these kind of monolithic assumptions about what the military community is. Those of us that have been in the military understand that it is a diverse community. It's neither heroes nor villains. It's oftentimes something in between. It's a slice of America and average people doing exceptional things, in service, in uniform. There does need to be a conversation within the community about what do we expect from our public role models? But I will tell you, having veterans represented on the tickets is great. How they lead – we have to have a high expectation, I think a particularly high expectation of what we expect of veterans when they step into the public domain. We do not want to politicize the military. That is not helpful. So we have to be really guarded about trends towards that, politicizing the military. And yet, the voices of military veterans matter.

Drew F. Lawrence 

And just as Americans might not understand the spectrum of service, Anderson said that the public often misunderstands the awards themselves.

Anthony Anderson 

I think it's a misunderstanding overall of what these awards mean. To me and you, some people have served that are veterans. We understand the award system. We understand what these awards are given for. For the average civilian, they don't know what a CIB is. Most of them don't care, but we do, and it's like they, you know, to me, a CIB, a Purple Heart, Silver Star, something like that – those awards aren't just given. They're earned by sometimes the lives of our brothers and sisters. Some of these families, that's all they have left of their loved one, is that Purple Heart, that Silver Star, CIB, whatever that might be.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Stolen Valor, as a legal term, is a relatively new thing. The original act banning fraudulently representing one’s service was put in place in 2005 but was deemed unconstitutional by the courts for violating the First Amendment. While the legal consequences are from this millennium, the use of service in politics is quite old.

Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky 

I think for many different generations of politicians, military service was almost a box to check, especially in the wake of major conflicts. So after World War Two, after the Civil War, you would see a series of politicians who had been in service, and it wasn't necessarily a central part of their campaign, but it was expected that if you were going to. This monumental country changing event, then people who are interested in the future of the country would have been involved in that process.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, she’s the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and author of Making the Presidency.

Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky 

I think secondarily, perhaps, the service was often referenced as a demonstration of patriotism or commitment to the nation or willingness to sacrifice on behalf of their fellow citizens, but it was often not made a central part of the campaign, especially when you had huge generations that had widely participated. I think that has shifted somewhat in the wake of the Vietnam War, because the conflict was very controversial and sometimes opposed in American society, and so people wanted to either demonstrate that they were on the right or wrong side of that conflict, and that was something I think we've seen again after the War on Terror. But also as our politics have become increasingly nasty over the last couple of decades – although that is certainly not the first time we've had nasty politics – as it resumed its nastiness, people have started to attack that service and poke holes, or try and poke holes in it and try and demonstrate certain services being better than others.

Drew F. Lawrence 

I asked her if she thought that the increasing civilian military divide was contributing to these political attacks on service.

Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky 

I do think that the increasing civil military divide and the increasing professionalism of the military, such that a smaller and smaller portion of the American population are actually participating in in the military, has exacerbated this process, but I think it's maybe in a little bit of a counterintuitive way. I think that because fewer and fewer people are serving there has become more of a heroization effect people are treating all veterans as though they are heroes, and I certainly believe they should be celebrated for their service, but my understanding from speaking to veterans is that that is often a very uncomfortable position, because it makes them out to be something other than human, and it forces them to sometimes cover up the challenges that come with service, whether it be for their families or the implications of being in a war zone. And so because we are treating these people as heroes, that inherently means that very few people get to be in hero status, because you can't have tons and tons of heroes, which is one of the reasons I think that we are seeing an attempt in politics to say, well, these people count as heroes and these people don't. And I think that's pernicious, because I don't think that we should be celebrating hero status, but rather sacrifice and commitment, and that can come in a lot of different forms, and we should be grateful that people want to sacrifice and serve for the nation, whether it is as a fireman or as a veteran or as some other form of public service.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Anderson said that veterans should be proud of their service – regardless of the job they did. And that we need more vets in leadership roles as the long-lasting effects of these wars continue to rear themselves – but that comes with honesty and public trust.

Anthony Anderson 

I think they should be proud of their service. But, you know, because we need veterans in Congress, we need veterans in the government, because they've been down here in the weeds with the average soldier. They know what's going on. They know what the military needs…And I think with having veterans running for office, if they do it the right way, run on the record like they're supposed to tell the truth about the record. And just run on what they did. Not only will civilians trust them, the veterans trust them. Because if you're a veteran and you know this guy's lying about a service record, you're not going to trust him to support your calls or to support the veterans in Congress. It automatically tells you, ‘Well, wait a minute, why is he lying about his service? Is he in this for himself? Because he's definitely not in it for us if he's lying to us already.'

Drew F. Lawrence 

Beneath the scrum is a choice – the choice to vote. And a lot of the attacks or mistruths or political saber rattling we’ve talked about can make politics unappetizing for veterans – and all voters – when it comes time to participate in the democratic process of voting. Here’s Todd Connor again.

Todd Connor 

The biggest risk is that veterans don't participate, and I get why they don't want to, and young people, and the reason that they won't participate is because they'll look at the reality show that plays out on cable news, which is fueled by anger and outrage, and they won't want anything to do with it. And that's not an irrational response to an irrational system.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Connor’s group, Veterans for All Voters, is trying to fix some of the disillusionment by putting veterans at the forefront and pushing for election reform for voters who may feel disenfranchised by the current system.

Todd Connor 

The reason we think military veterans, and we've organized military veterans, is because Americans, they don't trust a lot of people. They're skeptical of what they see on the news. They're skeptical of what they see on the internet. They're skeptical of politicians. They're skeptical of lots of folks, lots of institutions. Veterans is sort of the one of the few remaining classes of people that the American people are willing to listen to, particularly when they come from their communities and return home to their communities. And so veterans who have demonstrated their patriotism, who, frankly, have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic, we face a domestic threat to our democracy, to our national security in the form of calcified political structures that benefit a $12 billion political industry and are hurting the American people…So I think we do very much view this as an obligated kind of next form of service that isn't a kinetic warfare mission, but is about dealing with a crisis that really, you know, if you ask me, 'What's the existential threat to the United States of America?' It's this internal division. And so we feel that this is an extension of our time and service of the oath that we swore.

Drew F. Lawrence 

And for active duty service members, there’s a lot at stake.

Todd Connor 

Particularly for active duty military service members, they are disproportionately affected and hurt by antiquated election systems. We know that military and overseas votes are disproportionately cast aside because they don't make electronic voting available, or because of registration windows, or because they move a lot, or because it's hard to get ballots returned.

Drew F. Lawrence 

We’re going to hang some voting and registration resources in the show notes of this episode. You can find them on Military.com’s Fire Watch page. But one thing I want to emphasize is voting by mail. Service members and their families overwhelmingly rely on it to cast their votes, and some states have already started the process. The Federal Voting Assistance Program website is a great resource and Connor also recommended calling your county clerk in your voting state for information, too.

Todd Connor 

Vote, be a poll worker. Ensure that your command has a culture of civic participation. I was the voting officer on the USS Bunker Hill. Make it a command priority, that everyone's registered to vote, knows how to vote, request their absentee ballots, know the timelines for this stuff…people need to do their homework for their state of record, check their registration, request absentee ballots and vote, participate, be a poll worker and then get engaged in things that are non partisan…use your voice. You don't have to be a partisan take down an artist. You don't have to be on MSNBC or Fox News, but don't hide in the shadows, because Americans need moral leadership. They need role modeling as to what civic behavior, productive behavior, looks like, and they don't often see that from our political figures. And so I encourage veterans to be leaders from their corner of the world.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Thank you for listening to this special episode of Fire Watch. Thank you to our executive producers – Zach Fryer-Biggs and Jared Keller. If you enjoyed this episode, give us a rating. Get out and vote. Register. You more than earned it. And as always, thanks for listening.