Herschel Walker is back in the news.
Don't worry, he's not running for office again just yet.
No, in this case, emails have now emerged implying that he appears to
have solicited literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In kind of fake political donations that rather than going to his
campaign to be spent on his effort to become a senator.
Instead just went to his business, effectively went to Herschel Walker.
We are still very much in the allegations phase of this reporting, but
we do wanna give you the details.
So apparently at one point, he emailed a representative for billionaire
industrialist and longtime family friend Dennis Washington back in March 2022.
And they were talking back and forth about money for his candidacy.
So the guy decided to give him the money, and he appears,
at least based on official communications, to have believed that he was giving it to
the campaign to be spent on campaign stuff.
But we now find out what really happened according to emails obtained by
The Daily Beast.
And that have since been verified by a person with knowledge of
the exchanges showing that Walker asked Washington to wire
$535,000 directly to his company, HR Talent, LLC.
The emails reveal that not only did Washington do it, but
he was under the impression that these were, in fact, political contributions.
And we can show some of these emails.
The important part from this is that at some point,
the representative reaches out to Herschel Walker saying.
After our call, a redacted name reached out to me and said with you that any funds
sent to the HR Talent account can't legally be used for political purposes.
So you need to sort of transfer them over.
Look, we don't know what other communications might have been happening.
But if we assume that all of what we're seeing is legit and these were the only
communications, it seems the billionaire wanted these to be kind of on the level.
As much on the level as over half a million dollars being given to a super
Pac that's obviously coordinating with a single candidate can ever be.
But anyway, he didn't wanna just give the guy a half a million dollars.
That apparently rises to the level of bribery.
And so legal experts have been saying that best case scenario,
this is a violation of federal fundraising rules.
Worst case, it could be wire fraud.
It could even be wire fraud defrauding the right wing billionaire in the end.
Look, we don't know in the end exactly what happened.
It is possible that he refunded this money.
There's no evidence of anything being done of a variety of different ways to correct
the situation, though.
And so as of right now, it still does look really worrying, and
I think this should bother a lot of different types of people,
not only people who worry about money and politics.
But if you're a Republican, he lost maybe he could have used that $500,000 for
his campaign.
So anyway, Nina, what do you think about this?
>> Why would he, even in the first place,
ask this donor to donate it to his company?
The red flag should have went off,
no pun intended, to the donor right then and there.
Why am I sending this money to somebody's personal company?
Number two, who was managing Herschel Walker?
Because any campaign manager or finance director worth their sort
would not have allowed their candidate to do this without protest.
And maybe, like you said, there are some things that we do not know.
Maybe people on this campaign team did protest, but
I'm just putting that out there as somebody who has been through this and
have helped people go through this.
There's no way in the hell that a campaign manager or finance director would have
allowed their candidate to do this without warning them that this is wrong.
It is illegal, this is not where this money is supposed to go.
And why did he think that this donor was going to give him money for
his talent agency?
What since this, for what?
Dude demand your run?
That's just common sense.
But my grandmother always said that common sense is not common.
And then lastly, John, in a way it's unfortunate, but Herschel Walker,
even though he lost,
he fits in with a lot of elected officials that are on the heel right now.
They may not be asking multimillionaires and
billionaires to donate personally to their companies.
But maybe there's so many loopholes by which they can use to get money to get
these kinda cushy platinum level jobs when they leave and also to do insider trading.
I don't know, John.
Insider trading, this it seems to me, Herschel Walker, unfortunately,
would have fit right in with the gang down there.
>> Yeah, it's timed really well with AOC and
Representative Gates rolling out their bill again.
>> Kudos to them.
>> Yeah, if they needed another demonstration of money in politics and
all of that.
By the way, I expect that today it's gonna be wall to wall coverage on Fox News of
this story because as we all know, they hate the deep state.
They hate people manipulating politicians behind the scenes, and
they also hate the elites having so much power.
This is a huge amount of power.
This and the Clarence Thomas thing.
Come on, that's their whole rundown for the full day, right?
Cuz they don't want billionaires sticking it to the left behind silence
conservatives.
I have a feeling they're gonna be fine with these.
He's gonna run again, I bet.
Look, especially if he gets away with this, you can get so much money.
He ended his campaign still having $5 million, which, again,
if you're a Republican in that state.
How angry should you be that he had millions of dollars he could have spent to
try to win that race?
>> They should be angry, john, you got to use that money.
You got to use it because you don't want that what if fact.
>> Yeah. >> That's why people are donating
the money, so that you can use it to try to win, not for you to hoard it and
save it.
Like I said, I don't know what kinda operatives he had working on his campaign,
but obviously his felon as a candidate and I'm not saying that because he lost.
I'm talking about in the way they operate.
>> Sure.
>> Is very telling.
>> You could have used that $5 million to buy a more convincing fake police badge.
You could have spent it as hush money to stop some of your prior partners from
coming out with their horrendous situations that they had with you.
>> The shade Johnn, the shade.
>> Sorry, I just tryna be helpful Nina [LAUGH]
[MUSIC]