It's Been a Wild 24 Hours for Herschel Walker

Since announcing his run for Senate in Georgia, Republican candidate Herschel Walker has been dogged by claims that he threatened an ex-wife, lied about his credentials, and criticized absentee fathers while being one himself. Now, in a new allegation of hypocrisy, the former football star who backs a total ban on abortions is accused of paying for one for an ex-girlfriend. A woman tells the Daily Beast that Walker urged her to get an abortion after he impregnated her in 2009—the same year he had a child with a woman who wasn't his wife—and ultimately reimbursed her for the procedure. More:

• The check: The unidentified woman has offered up a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, dated Sept. 12, 2009; a photo of a signed personal check from Walker for $700, dated Sept. 17; and a card he sent her as evidence to back up her claim. "Pray you are feeling better," reads the card, signed with the distinctive "H" of Walker's signature.

• 'We all deserve better': The woman, who's remaining anonymous, says she came forward after members of Walker's team repeatedly asked her to vouch for his character. "I just can't with the hypocrisy anymore," she says of the first-time candidate. "We all deserve better."
• His denial: Walker calls the story a "flat-out lie" and a "repugnant hatchet job," per CNN, adding he plans to sue the Daily Beast for defamation. In a Monday interview, he told Fox's Sean Hannity that he didn't even know the woman, who offered up further evidence of a romantic relationship. Explaining the check, he said, "I give money to people all the time 'cause I'm always helping people."

• Criticism from son: Christian Walker has blasted his father as a liar and hypocrite. "How DARE YOU LIE and act as though you're some 'moral, Christian, upright man,'" the 23-year-old, whose mother Cindy DeAngelis Grossman was married to Walker from 1983 to 2002, wrote on Twitter. "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," he added.
• More criticism from son: "You have 4 kids that we know of and you weren't in the house raising ONE of them, you were out cheating and lying," continued Christian, a conservative personality, in a since-deleted tweet, per Yahoo. He noted "every single" member of Walker's family "asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past" but "he decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it."

story continues below

• Supports total abortion ban: Walker—recruited and endorsed by former President Donald Trump, per NBC News—supports a total ban on abortion, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or cases where the life of the woman is threatened. "To say that it is OK for a woman to kill her baby when [God] said 'Thou shall not kill' ... I can't square it," Walker said in August, per the Daily Beast.
• A 'champion for unborn babies': Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, has noted he will be "a most effective champion for unborn babies." But recent scandals have allowed his Democratic opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, to move ahead in the polls. The race is one of the most important in the country, per the Daily Beast, as it could decide which party controls the Senate.

(More Herschel Walker stories.)