Congressional Democrats who served in the military came to the defense Thursday of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz after Republican VP nominee JD Vance accused him of “stolen valor.”

Vance said Wednesday that Walz, Minnesota’s governor, “lied” about his military service and “abandoned” his unit before it was deployed to Iraq in 2005.

Vance, a Marine veteran, referenced years-old and long-disputed criticisms of Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years, by some soldiers who served alongside him that the then 41-year-old left the service months before their battalion was sent to Iraq.

Walz filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission as a candidate for Congress in February 2005 and, according to the Minnesota National Guard, retired that May as a master sergeant. His unit received its deployment orders in July 2005, trained through the fall and deployed the following March, according to a 2007 article on the National Guard’s website. 

In a press call hosted by the Democratic National Committee, Reps. Jason Crow, D-Colo., and Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., excoriated Vance for calling Walz’s military service into question. Crow is an Army veteran, and Auchincloss served in the Marines.

“To try to do one of the worst things you can do in America — that is to attack a veteran and their service — it's old, it's tired, and America is just not going to put up with it,” Crow said. “And we're not going to put up with it.”

The subject of the press call was to highlight the progress made in the two years since President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act, which expanded health benefits to veterans exposed to toxic substances while serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. But the Vance-Walz controversy received just as much attention, if not more.

Auchincloss said the Trump campaign’s attacks on Walz are intended to distract from former President Donald Trump’s “long track record of disparaging veterans.”

“He called those who gave the last full measure of devotion ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’ and he can try to deny it as much as he wants, but a four-star general and his own staffer heard him say it and has confirmed it on the record repeatedly,” Auchincloss said, referring to former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Auchincloss also criticized Vance for “repeatedly” saying “he wants to cut and run from our allies, including the freedom fighters in Ukraine, and has said that we should not support Taiwan should it come under attack.”

The Massachusetts congressman added, “If I were Donald Trump, with five deferments from Vietnam as a favor to my father, I would be very cautious about opening the door to attacks on those who served honorably.”

Trump received five draft deferments in the 1960s, when the U.S. joined the Vietnam War: four to attend college and one for a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels.

Separately on Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who served in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve, also defended Walz, writing in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Walz “served honorably and well.”

Auchincloss said it’s “critical” that Democrats push back on baseless claims like the ones made by Vance. 

“I think we saw 20 years ago with the ‘swift-boating’ of John Kerry, who served honorably in Vietnam, that we cannot presume that unfounded attacks will implode under their own lies,” he said. “We have to specifically and substantively call them out.”

Crow said of the Trump campaign: “It just shows how morally bankrupt they are. They have no ideas. They have no vision for the future. All they can do is attack and lie and twist and contort.”

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., a former Navy helicopter pilot, said during the press call the veteran community is “excited” Harris selected Walz as her running mate. 

“It really speaks to so many of us to see somebody with that fantastic record of public service to want to raise his hand again and serve again as our vice president of this great nation,” she said.

Vance also highlighted a past quote, shared Tuesday by the Harris campaign, in which Walz, speaking about gun restrictions, said, “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.”

“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war?” Vance asked. “When was this? What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and he has not spent a day in a combat zone. 

“What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you're not.”

NBC News reported Wednesday that a Harris campaign spokesperson did not deny Walz had embellished in the video when he spoke about carrying weapons of war. 

“In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times,” the spokesperson told the network. “Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country — in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”

Spectrum News’ Joseph Konig contributed to this report.