The Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Georgia who has maintained a strong anti-abortion stance has found himself mired deeper in controversy.
Herschel Junior Walker a former American football star has been accused by another woman who claims that she had a six-year relationship with him while he was still married and playing for the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings in the NFL and paid for her abortion when she became pregnant.
According to a BBC report, the accuser called Walker “a hypocrite” unfit to be a US senator, even as the high-profile GOP candidate seeks to unseat the Democratic incumbent in Georgia in the mid-term elections next month.
The ex-NFL star, who had denied an earlier accusation also, called the latest one “foolishness”.
Walker, who is strongly backed by former US president Donald Trump, is contesting against Democrat Raphael Warnock in November’s mid-term race.
The fresh allegations came to the fore when the second woman, who spoke anonymously over Zoom to reporters, said that Walker pressured her into ending her pregnancy. She also did not appear on camera during the virtual news conference in Los Angeles. Both women have not revealed their identities publicly. The second woman, named only as “Jane Doe” by her lawyer, told reporters on Wednesday that she had a six-year-long relationship with Walker and that he had driven her to a clinic, reported CBS News.
“He has publicly taken the position that he is about life and against abortion under any circumstance, when in fact he pressured me to have an abortion and personally ensured that it occurred by driving me to the clinic and paying for it,” she told reporters.
The woman’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, cited exhibits including alleged love letters, a 1992 voicemail and a hotel receipt that she said proved the two had a relationship in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The BBC said in its report that it has not inspected and verified the purported evidence.
Speaking at a campaign event in Dillard, Georgia, just before the news conference, Walker, who has taken a strong anti-abortion stance, called the latest accusation a “lie”.
“I’m done with this foolishness. I already told people this is a lie, and I’m not going to entertain, continue, to carry a lie along,” he said.
“And I also want to let you know that I didn’t kill JFK either,” he joked while accusing the Democrats of playing dirty tricks against him ahead of polls.
The new accuser claims that she is an independent voter who supported Donald Trump, and said she became pregnant in 1993 by Walker while he was playing for the Dallas Cowboys.
She said Walker “encouraged” and gave her money for the abortion, but after she became emotional on her first visit to the clinic and left without the procedure, he returned with her the next day and “waited for hours in the parking lot until I came out”.
“I was devastated because I felt like I was pressured into having the abortion,” she said.
Walker had earlier this month denied similar accusations from another anonymous woman who claimed that he had pressured her and paid for her to get an abortion in 2009.
Interestingly, Walker is challenging the incumbent, Warnock, a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta who supports abortion in Georgia. The close contest could determine which party controls the US Senate after next month’s elections.
In a statement on Wednesday, Warnock campaign spokeswoman Rachel Petri said: “Today’s new report is just the latest example of a troubling pattern we have seen play out again and again and again.”
Warnock has also been assailed over reports of the church evicting low-income tenants from the apartments it owns, and for running over his ex-wife’s foot in a car during a domestic dispute.
