ATLANTA — The drama surrounding Herschel Walker took a new turn this weekend as texts emerged showing the Republican’s wife reached out to his ex-girlfriend, whose claims he paid for her abortion have rocked the U.S. Senate race in Georgia.
The Walker camp provided the texts to NBC News but declined to make them available to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The woman, whose name has been withheld by news outlets because of privacy concerns, has also declined to speak to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to confirm the story, first reported in The Daily Beast.
“Did you know Herschel paid for my abortion the first time? Or that he told me it wasn’t the ‘right time’ to have [my current child]?” she wrote in a message sent Friday morning to Herschel Walker’s wife, Julie Walker, according to NBC.
“This message makes me incredibly sad,” Julie Walker replied, according to texts shared with NBC. “You know I have continually tried to bridge a better relationship between you and Herschel putting [the child] first.”
Walker, a staunch opponent of abortion, told NBC the text exchange, which was initiated by Julie Walker, showed he was unaware of the abortion in 2009 until he was confronted about it by a reporter this month.
“The first I knew about any of this was when some reporter asked me about an abortion. And I’m like, ‘No, that’s a lie.’ And then I was asked if I paid for an abortion, and I said ‘No. I did not pay for an abortion,’” Herschel Walker told NBC. “I’m not saying she did or didn’t have one [an abortion]. I’m saying I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know.”
The Republican Senate hopeful spoke to NBC as on the same day The New York Times published an interview with the woman, corroborating her account of the abortion story. In the Times, the woman said Walker also urged her to have an abortion when she became became pregnant a second time.
Instead, she had the baby. Walker and the woman ended their relationship after she refused to terminate the pregnancy and she told the Times the former football star has had little interaction with the boy, now 10, since he was born.
The woman provided the Times and The Daily Beast with a copy of a $575 receipt from an Atlanta abortion clinic, a $700 check that she said was a reimbursement check from Walker and a copy of a “get well” card she said he sent her. It was signed “H” along with the message: “Pray you are feeling better.”
Walker’s explanation did not address those items.
The text exchange provided to NBC dated back to May and showed that the woman had previously expressed support for Walker’s candidacy.
“He’ll do great & you will keep him focused! Proud of you guys!” she wrote to Julie Walker on May 24, the day of Georgia’s primary election. “Wishing nothing but the best for you tonight!!!”
The escalating scandal has upended Georgia’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, where polls have shown Walker neck-and-neck with his Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock.
The stream of stunning revelations prompted Walker’s 23-year-old son, Christian, to lace into his father online lambasting his lack of family values, lies and history of violence.
Republicans have rallied around Walker, although in Georgia, support from some leaders has been tepid. Gov. Brian Kemp, up for reelection, has steered clear of defending Walker. Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has been of the few GOP officials to criticize him.
“I’m not voting for Sen. Warnock, and like a lot of other Georgians, Herschel Walker has not yet earned my vote,” Duncan told The AJC. “He’s got four weeks left to change our minds.”
On the campaign trail, Warnock has shied away from talking about the unfolding saga although he has been stressing his support for abortion rights. At a rally on Friday in Macon, Warnock didn’t mention Walker by name in his speech.
Pressed afterward by reporters, he called the allegations “disturbing.”
“We have seen some disturbing things. We’ve seen a disturbing pattern, and it raises real questions about who is actually ready to represent the people of Georgia,” he said.
Following an event in Norcross aimed at Asian American voters Friday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who supports abortion rights, used the Walker drama to take a jab at Kemp, who signed Georgia’s strict new abortion measure into law.
“He is always taking positions that are designed to undermine personal freedoms. And you cannot say that you believe that Herschel Walker is entitled to his personal choices, but no one else in Georgia is,” Abrams said.
“I think that anytime hypocrisy is revealed among Republicans then it’s incredibly important,” she added.
Walker has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest or when the life of the mother is stake.
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(Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed to this story.)
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