CNN host Michael Smerconish said that concerns around the 1995 DUI arrest of Vice President Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, are a major issue that the campaign has to confront.
“The DUI story is indefensible,” he said, later asking if Walz was properly vetted by the Harris campaign.
Walz has sought to downplay his arrest for drunk driving in the mid-90s, but questions about his run-in with law enforcement continue to dog him.
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On Sept. 23, 1995, when Walz was working as a teacher in his home state of Nebraska, he was pulled over for going 96 mph in a 55-mph zone.
In comments to reporters in 2006, Walz’s campaign for Congress in Minnesota’s 1st District insisted he was “not drunk” and blamed a “misunderstanding” with police on “Walz’s deafness,” which his then-campaign manager said had since been “surgically corrected.”
“I don’t buy it,” Smerconish said, pushing back on claims that Walz’s DUI was related to his “hearing disability.”
“In the end, it’s going to be about the top of the ticket. But to me, the DUI is bigger than the stolen valor allegation, not because of the drinking but because of the lie,” he said.
Walz has been criticized by veterans, including by some former Army National Guard members that served alongside him, for leaving the Guard before it was deployed to Iraq.
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When asked how the Harris campaign should deal with the controversy around Walz’s representation of his 1995 DUI, Smerconish said that it needs to be tackled “full-on.”
“Maybe this is as a result of the expedited nature of her ascendancy as a candidate,” Smerconish said of the Harris’ campaign vetting of the Minnesota governor. “But it makes me wonder how much they really knew about it.”
While Walz has represented during campaigns that his DUI was related to his “deafness,” a state trooper’s report obtained by Alpha News contradicts those claims.
“A strong odor of alcoholic beverage was detected emitting from Mr. Walz[‘s] breath and person,” the report said. The trooper indicated that Walz submitted to and failed both a field sobriety test and a preliminary breath test.
“Walz spoke sloppily and should not have represented a role that he had as having been a permanent role when it wasn’t,” he said.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo and Taylor Penley contributed to this report.
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