WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who has said he opposes abortion with no exceptions, has denied a media report that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.
Walker, who aims to unseat Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia, was responding to a Monday report by The Daily Beast that said the candidate’s then-girlfriend provided a receipt, a copy of the check and a get well card given to her by on the former football star endorsed by ex-President Donald Trump.
“This is a flat-out lie – and I deny this in the strongest possible terms,” Walker, 60, said in a statement late Monday.
Matt Fuller, an editor at the publication, said it stood by its report, which Reuters could not independently confirm.
The report comes two weeks before early voting begins in Georgia, one of several critical races that will determine whether Democrats hold onto their narrow majority in the chamber.
It is the latest scandal for Walker, a first-time candidate for office who has also faced allegations of domestic violence.
One of his sons, conservative social media influencer Christian Walker, blasted his father following Monday’s report.
“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you,” he wrote on Twitter.
Abortion looms large ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
Warnock, who serves as pastor at the Atlanta church once led by Martin Luther King Jr., backs access to abortion and other reproductive health care, saying on his campaign website that the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade “cannot stand.”
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)
