Herschel Walker is a retired NFL participant, a Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, and because the Day by day Beast reported, a extremely dangerous businessman.
Walker performed many sports activities, appeared within the 1992 Winter Olympics the place he competed in the two-man U.S bobsled workforce and is an undefeated MMA fighter, in accordance with his web site.
His companies are one other matter.
The Donald Trump-backed candidate entered the suit-and-tie world shortly after retiring from the NFL in 1997, founding Renaissance Man Inc., a health-and-wellness meals firm geared at promoting health-conscious merchandise. Its flagship drink, aptly named Aloe-Lu-Ya (a play on the phrase Hallelujah), launched in 1999 however by no means garnered success.
“This product launch was a failure.” the corporate famous in a 2002 SEC submitting.
This was only the start of a turbulent journey crammed with exaggerated boasts and claims of success.
Walker based what would turn into an umbrella company named H. Walker Enterprises in 2002, headquartered in Savannah, Georgia.
One among his corporations, named Renaissance Man Meals Companies (RMFS), claimed to be the biggest minority-owned meals firm within the U.S. Walker was recorded telling Fox Information in 2018 the corporate owned a hen processing plant that employed 600 individuals.
Alas, a COVID-19 pandemic courtroom submitting exhibits the corporate reported simply eight workers and utilized for 2 Paycheck Safety Program loans totaling $180,000.
The corporate didn’t personal a hen processing plant, both. As an alternative, poultry producers provide hen to RMFS, which the corporate then sells to different retailers.
The reality got here to gentle in 2018 when RMFS was sued, inflicting Walker to retract earlier statements that the corporate owned manufacturing facilities.
“I don’t imply to talk of ‘personal’ in a technical sense,” he advised the courtroom.
In 2020, Walker claimed the upholstery firm, Renaissance Manufacturing, also called Renaissance Hospitality, was the biggest minority-owned attire firm within the U.S. It was not.
After which there’s the matter of possession.
“In accordance with a overview of enterprise data, that firm — both Renaissance Manufacturing or Renaissance Hospitality, relying on the telling (although each are actually dissolved) — was not his [Walker’s] in any widespread sense of possession; it was a part of a enterprise association with the true proprietor,” acknowledged The Day by day Beast. Each companies are actually dissolved.
And if that wasn’t sufficient to blur the notion of an in any other case upstanding member of society, Walker claimed he graduated valedictorian of his highschool and obtained a bachelor’s diploma in felony justice from the College of Georgia — neither of which is true.
Walker, who’s at the moment making an attempt to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock, skipped a current GOP main debate indicating he is not going to take part in main debates, maybe in response to the current investigations and the revelations of his failed enterprise ventures.
It could make sense that ex-President Donald Trump, who lives by the precept of truthful hyperbole, would endorse a like-minded particular person equivalent to Walker.
Photograph: U.S. Air Pressure Tech. Sgt. Samuel King Jr., Public area, through Wikimedia Commons
