President-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate Herschel Walker, the former football player whose 2022 Senate run was plagued by controversy, to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.
“Herschel has spent decades serving as an Ambassador to our Nation’s youth, our men and women in the Military, and athletes at home and abroad,” Trump said on social media Tuesday night.
Walker would need to be confirmed by the Senate to assume the role. The Senate has not confirmed a U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas in over a decade. Former President Barack Obama had nominated Cassandra Butts for the role in 2014, but the Senate never even brought her nomination up for a vote, according to The Associated Press. She died in 2016.
Trump in his first term nominated Doug Manchester in 2017 for the ambassador role, but his nomination stalled for over two years. CBS News in 2019 also uncovered evidence of a possible pay-to-play scheme for the role. He eventually withdrew and Trump went on to nominate William Douglass in 2020. Douglass’ nomination was withdrawn by President Biden when he took office, and Mr. Biden in turn nominated Calvin Smyre, who has not been confirmed by the Senate.
Absent an official ambassador to the Bahamas, Kimberly Furnish currently serves in the role of Chargé d’Affaires.
Walker rose to national prominence as a star running back for the Georgia Bulldogs, winning the Heisman trophy in 1982. He spent his first few years of professional ball in the United States Football League before it folded, and then moved on to the NFL.
Walker reentered the national spotlight when, at Trump’s urging, he challenged Georgia’s Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock for his seat in 2022. The race featured several controversies, including two women claiming that Walker — who was running as an anti-abortion candidate — had paid for them to get abortions.
Walker denied both allegations.
In one instance, Walker admitted to writing a check for a woman who said he paid for her to get an abortion in 2009, but he said he hadn’t known what the money was for.
Another woman claimed Walker paid her to get an abortion while the two carried out a six-year relationship while he was married to another woman and playing in the NFL. During a news conference back in 2022, she said she couldn’t go through with the procedure when she went to get it herself, so Walker took her to a clinic in the Dallas area the next day and waited for her while she got the abortion.
“This was a lie a week ago and it is a lie today,” Walker said at the time following an interview the woman gave a week after the initial news conference.
Warnock would go on to win the election in a runoff after neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote on election day.