Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker has claimed that he has either founded, co-founded, or operated a charity group that has helped thousands of veterans cope with mental health issues, but an investigation by the Associated Press discovered that he is actually just a paid spokesperson.

“About fifteen years ago, I started a program called Patriot Support,” Walker said in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt last October.  In an interview with a Savannah television station, Walker claimed, “People need to know I started a military program, a military program that treats (thousands) of soldiers a year.”

Patriot Support is a program started by Universal Health Systems to assist veterans with behavioral health programs.  I hired Walker as a spokesperson, paying him more than $300,000 last year alone.  He has no operational role with UHS or the program.

The lie is another in a series of lies and exaggerations made by Walker about his career and life.  He claimed to have finished his college career at the University of Georgia, were he was a star football player, at top of his class, but in fact, he never graduated.  In 2020, he claimed to have invented a mist that killed the coronavirus; it didn’t.

Worse still, Patriot Support was investigated by the federal government and at least two dozen states, suspected of defrauding federal and state agencies for directing veterans with government-paid insurance into expensive programs they did not need.  The company paid more than $120 million to setting the cases.

Walker has a long, documented history of mental health issues he acknowledges.  He is reportedly bipolar, and he allegedly threatened bodily harm to his ex-wife.