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It’s been more than six months since one-time Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker conceded defeat. But it’s been even longer since the office of the Georgia secretary of state opened its investigation into questions surrounding the college football legend’s residency. And while the race is over, that investigation is not.
In emails to The Daily Beast, the office confirmed that the residency investigation, which opened on Nov. 28, 2022, is still open. The agency provided a case sheet confirming the probe, titled “Fulton county residency issue with candidate.” Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed to The Daily Beast that the office had been actively working on the case in recent months, including contacting family members.
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It’s unclear why the investigation has dragged on. Residency issues are usually resolved quickly—one way or the other. For instance, the state of Georgia previously opened a voter residency investigation into Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, on Aug. 19, 2021. The office closed the investigation a month later, finding she hadn’t committed any violations.
Anthony Michael Kreis, who specializes in election law at the Georgia State University College of Law, told The Daily Beast he was “surprised” to learn that the probe was still open.
“I was always skeptical of the idea that Herschel did anything unlawful in terms of the residency issue,” Kreis said. “Residency questions are typically really easy ones, and while this was politically sketchy, I always thought it was a non-issue as a legal matter, so I’m surprised that it would take this long to close the investigation.”
Questions about Walker’s residency shadowed his campaign from the start. But those questions re-emerged in late November, a few weeks after he forced a runoff election against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA). That’s when CNN reported that the former NFL star took a homestead tax exemption in both 2021 and 2022 for his home in Texas—a break only available for a “principal residence,” according to the state comptroller. The exemption saved him about $1,500 last year, according to CNN.
Walker—a former Dallas Cowboy who lived in the Dallas area for decades before announcing his Georgia candidacy in August 2021—had claimed the Texas exemption on the home since 2012. But all the while, he maintained one of the most recognized names in Georgia, as a University of Georgia football star in the early 1980s—even though he left school early in favor of a professional career in the U.S. Football League.
The CNN report raised legal questions in both states—tax laws in Texas, and candidate and voter residency rules in Georgia, where Walker registered to vote weeks ahead of launching his campaign. However, Kreis said, Georgia’s candidate residency requirements are fairly flexible, with a homestead claim being only one of a number of data points that officials consider.
“The key factor is whether the person moved to their primary residence with the intention to stay,” Kreis told The Daily Beast.
Walker and Blanchard had lived together in Texas for years, but during the race they resided in an Atlanta-area house Blanchard had owned for decades, which also doubled as the campaign’s first official address. However, The Daily Beast reported that, previously, the couple may not have personally stayed in that house at all, with Blanchard collecting between $15,000 and $50,000 in rental income on the home between 2020 and 2021, listing the asset as “Georgia residence.”
While Kreis expressed surprise at the lengthy probe, he also offered an anodyne possibility.
“Perhaps, and I think most likely, it’s because the secretary of state’s office in particular, and Fulton County more generally, have been inundated with work related to the 2020 election,” Kreis said.
“That can cut both ways, though,” he continued. “Why wouldn’t you just close it out and just get it off your desk?”
When told that investigators had not merely tabled the case, but had been actively working it this year, Kreis replied, “That’s almost inexplicable to me.”
He theorized that “other legal questions might arise from the complaint,” but said he didn’t know why the secretary of state would keep the file open “unless they’re digging more, waiting on information, or possibly sharing information with another agency.” Kreis noted that the Walker campaign had its share of problems, and observed that campaign finance issues—revealed in recent Daily Beast reports—could have triggered federal involvement.
According to the investigation case sheet, the inquiry stemmed from a complaint, though the complainant’s name was redacted. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Nov. 28—the day the probe opened—that a woman named Ann Gregory Roberts filed a complaint with the state attorney general and Georgia Bureau of Investigations.)
“The only other thing I can think of is that the secretary of state investigators pulled on one string and maybe unraveled something else, and given how sloppy his campaign was I wouldn’t be shocked that in the process of a routine investigation they found something else or were asked to find something else, or are possibly cooperating with the Department of Justice—that would be the more nefarious speculative angle on it,” he said.
But The Daily Beast also reported that, at the same time Blanchard was taking rental income from the Atlanta property, a company she owned also received about $50,000 in federal COVID relief loans—at Walker’s Texas address. One of Walker’s financial disclosure statements claimed that his wife’s company had also generated rental income for her, suggesting the company had a stake in the Atlanta property.
The Daily Beast reached out to Walker and a campaign representative for comment, but did not receive a reply.
When Fox News asked Walker about the residency issues just ahead of the runoff, Walker shrugged it off as a “desperate” attack planted by his opponent.
“Anyone in Georgia know [sic] that I’m Georgia born, Georgia bred, and when I die, I’ll be Georgia dead,” Walker said. “Everyone knows that.”
