Rumors About Walz Abusing Students Have No Basis in Reality

In early October 2024, a wave of unfounded allegations concerning Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — the vice-presidential running mate of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris — sexually abusing students during his time as a teacher in Nebraska or Minnesota saw aggressive promotion on X and other social media platforms.

These claims followed an existing campaign of homophobic innuendo built upon casting Walz's time as the faculty adviser of the Gay Straight Alliance at Mankato West High School as nefarious. As Snopes has previously reported, posts describing the GSA as "a high school sex club" for which Walz "recruited" students went viral in August 2024. In the October 2024 wave of claims, two specific allegations of impropriety went viral, alongside continued and unfounded innuendo.

The first allegation was a "tip" from a former Walz student, allegedly received by a since-deleted anonymous X account named Black Insurrectionist (@DocNetyoutube), previously responsible for pushing other viral hoaxes. The tip, broadly speaking, alleged that Walz abused a 14-year-old boy at an Indigo Girls concert he took him to in March 1995.

The credibility of the Indigo Girls story hinged on the notion that the tip the X account received actually came to him before the publication of a widely read August 2024 New York Times report. That story, about the Walzes' support for gay students in the 1990s, told the tale of an Indigo Girls concert they attended with an unnamed gay student. The documents Black Insurrectionist used as evidence to support this claim showed obvious signs of manipulation, however.

The second allegation came from the alleged video testimony of a former student. In a video that went viral in mid-October 2024, a person identifying himself as a former Mankato West High School student named Matthew Metro said Walz touched him sexually when he had been confiding in Walz about problems with his home life after school. 

Reporting by The Washington Post and Wired revealed that a Russian-linked disinformation team had used Metro's identity and elements of his biography and an image of his face to create an AI-generated video. Metro and Walz have never met.

In this article, Snopes reviews the purported evidence behind these claims, and highlights several reasons to be suspicious of, or fully reject, these and similar allegations.

The High School GSA

As Snopes explained in August 2024, Walz served as the faculty adviser to Mankato West High School's first Gay-Straight Alliance, founded in 1999. That portion of Walz's career saw renewed interest following an in-depth New York Times story about Tim and Gwen Walz's support for LGBTQ+ causes published on Aug. 20, 2024.

Much of the Times' reporting focused on the positive testimony of lawyer and former Mankato West student Jacob Reitan, a student of Gwen Walz, who founded the GSA in 1999. The Times described his story, which has been told several times during Walz's political career, this way:

Mr. Reitan said he was astonished by what happened one day in his 10th grade English class. Out of the blue, his teacher, Ms. Walz, announced that her classroom was "a safe space for gay and lesbian students," he recalled. 

[…]

Mr. Reitan said that he thought long and hard before he began sharing his secret. …

During his junior year, he told his older sister. That led him to confide in Ms. Walz, the one adult at school he felt certain would support him. Her warm response, he said, gave him the confidence to confide in his parents.

[…]

Ultimately, Mr. Reitan was adamant that he would come out before receiving his high school diploma. … 

He came out to classmates in the summer of 1999 and later that year invited peers to join the gay-straight alliance club by passing out leaflets at the front entrance of the school.

After Reitan made this decision, the principal of Mankato West selected Tim Walz to be the adviser of the newly formed GSA.

Explaining why he was selected for this role during his 2018 run for Minnesota governor, Walz said he was chosen because he was an "older, white, straight, married football coach who [was] deeply concerned that these students are treated fairly and that there's no bullying."

In August 2024, the managing editor of the Christian satire website The Babylon Bee, Joel Berry, cited Walz's time with the GSA, claiming on X that "Tim Walz recruited young boys into a gay club at school," generating initial and baseless innuendo against the Walzes.

As Snopes shows here, the new October allegations appeared to borrow heavily from the material included in the Times' reporting or the public record — recasting that information as nefarious. Both relied on faked or fabricated evidence, and at least one of the allegations was later tied to a Russian influence operation.

The Indigo Girls Concert

In its story about Tim Walz's support for LGBTQ+ students, The New York Times recounted an anecdote about a former student whose identity the Times kept anonymous. A spokesperson for Gwen Walz confirmed the story's veracity to the Times:

She and her husband had grown close to a gay student [prior to moving to Minnesota] in Nebraska, where the Walzes met each other teaching at a public school. The couple took the student to an Indigo Girls concert, a spokeswoman for Ms. Walz said, the rare queer-friendly event in that time.

For Ms. Walz, being an ally for gay students was a matter of living up to the tenets of her Christian faith, Claire Lancaster, the spokeswoman, said, adding that Ms. Walz has alluded to a "strong belief that God creates people in the way they are supposed to be, whether that is gay or straight."

On Oct. 11, 2024, the Black Insurrectionist X account, which had previously promoted anti-Harris conspiracy theories, teased a forthcoming "October surprise" about the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential candidate, making reference to an Indigo Girls concert:

Ok Tim, I guess now would be a good time to drop my October surprise. You remember him right? The real reason you walked away from teaching? The kid who spent the night at your home? the one you went to the gay bar with? The reason the school board had a meeting about you? What do you think Tim, should I drop that now? Or should I wait another week or so? You know, the student you were having sex with, the male student you were having sex with? They didn't call you Touchdown Timmy because you were the football coach, oh wait, you lied about that also. You were the assistant coach. What do you think Tim? You remember the Indigo Girls concert, right? The gay bar, spending the night and of course the school board meeting. Think it is time Tim? TOUCHDOWN TIMMY. You were Touchy alright.

Black Insurrectionist claimed that an anonymous former student had contacted him in early August 2024, before the aforementioned Times reporting, with a story about Walz abusing him at a March 1995 Indigo Girls concert in Nebraska when he was 14. Black Insurrectionist waited until October, after the concert was a well-known anecdote, to relay the allegations, however.

Many of the other details in purported emails from the alleged victim shared by Black Insurrectionist echoed general, but distorted, elements of existing reporting by the Times and others about the Walzes' support for LGBTQ+ students, including this alleged testimony from Black Insurrectionist's anonymous victim:

I was 14 years old when I met Tim Walz. Like many normal kids, I was very confused about many things. My emotions were that of a typical teenager. Tim and Gwen Walz befriended me. I was a loner. They made me feel special.

Tim Walz started telling me secrets. …  He told me I could trust him with anything. I was very shy and having difficulty. Tim and Gwen extended an invitation for me to go to a concert with them in March of 1995. When we got [to] the concert, it was just Tim Walz and me.

The concert was the Indigo Girls, who I knew nothing about. During the concert, he started to explain to me the meaning behind the lyrics, He started explaining to me that I was gay.  The entire time he was explaining to me that I was gay, he was rubbing my back up and down in what I thought was a comforting gesture.

Black Insurrectionist cited the tipster's supposed knowledge of this Indigo Girls concert prior to The New York Times story as evidence of its credibility, using the latter as confirmation of the former. "This story CONFIRMS what I was being told by the individual who claimed abuse," Black Insurrectionist posted, referring to the Indigo Girls anecdote first reported by the Times. "This is when I really started digging."

The evidence that the tip came before the Times article, however, showed clear evidence of manipulation. One screenshot of a supposed email from the former student to Black Insurrectionist contained a cursor, suggesting the person who took the screenshot was the author of the text. The formatting for the date on the emails was inconsistent across each of the emails, as well:

Black Insurrectionist, in a series of posts, also shared documents from a 1996 school board meeting in which Walz offered his resignation, insinuating this was due to knowledge of the affair with a student. In reality, this meeting was related to Walz's 1995 DUI arrest, which Snopes has previously covered.

The events behind that school board meeting have been well-known for decades. The arrest led Walz, at the time, to offer a resignation from all his coaching and other extracurricular duties at the Nebraska High School he had been employed by at the time. No evidence suggests the resignation was offered for any other reason outside of the DUI. On Oct. 18, 2024, Black Insurrectionist either deleted their account or had it removed by X.

Because the central evidence behind the "Indigo Girls concert claim" shows clear signs of manipulation, and because many of its details appear to be a distorted retelling of existing media stories, the "Indigo Girls concert" claims are unfounded.

The Matthew Metro Affair

The claims attributed to Metro are verifiably false. As described in a Washington Post investigation, they rely entirely on a video of a man making allegations against Walz that was AI-generated. The video's creators used the name and face of an actual former Mankato West student, but the real Matthew Metro told the Post he has not met Walz.

(The Washington Post)

From a disinformation standpoint, the Post reported, the video was significant because it "appeared to draw on open-source research to crudely steal the identity of a member of the public who had a tenuous historical connection to a candidate currently in the public eye."

"The former student appeared to have been selected because personal details about his real life — among them, his sexual orientation — figured into the fabricated claim and could be seen as corroborating it," the Post reported. The allegation made in the video also appears to be based on a subversion of Walz's reported role as an adult students felt comfortable talking to about touchy subjects:

I was a student at Mankato West High School in Minnesota. Well, I'm gay, and I realized this when I was 14 years old. I never came out to talk about it. No one knew about it. My parents, none. My classmates. … My parents were going through a terrible divorce, and you know how it happens sometimes. All you need is someone to talk to.

Well, in my case, it was my teacher, Tim Walz. One day I had pushed him and asked him if we could talk. He agreed and asked me to stay after class. After all my classmates have left just the two of us in the class. I started to vent. I told him about my parents. I told him about the struggles with my classmates. …

Once I was done talking, he gave me this very wild look, and he said, I know what your real problem is, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. … He said, I know how you feel about men because I feel the same way too, and I can help you. He placed his hand on my knee and said, it is okay. Don't be afraid. He moved it in closer, his hand reaching up, almost touching my crotch.

Wired later attributed this video and its claims to a Russian-sponsored propaganda unit known as Storm-1516. This same group was reportedly responsible for a AI-generated video of the alleged victim of a Harris hit-and-run, which Snopes reported on when the claim went viral in September 2024. The group has had prolific success injecting false claims into the 2024 election discourse, as reported by Wired:

The propaganda unit's work has successfully reached the highest levels of the Republican party, with vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeating at least one of their narratives. NBC reported this week that the group has pushed at least 50 false narratives in this manner since last fall, which comes amid a broader Russian government effort to disrupt next month's election with the aim of helping former president Donald Trump return to the White House.

Because the video is fake and because the person whose likeness and biography it purports to portray denies its veracity, the Metro claims are verifiably false and likely originated as part of a foreign influence campaign.

A Polluted Information Landscape

While the potentially Russia-aligned origin of at least one of these October claims against Walz has received significant coverage, it is important to note that the unfounded allegation that Walz is a predator predates any apparently foreign effort.

Relating to the 2024 election, the "Walz is a predator" talking point originated in August 2024 when American users on X played into homophobic tropes that cast teachers who support LGBTQ+ students as "groomers" who "recruit" victims — language that is popular with elements of the American political right.

In the aftermath of those initial claims, social media posts have regularly attempted to cast innocuous anecdotes or photos of Walz as evidence of impropriety. Several readers have asked Snopes, for example, whether a photo showing Walz wearing a shirt that reads "Up The Ying Yang" while standing next to a younger Asian man is authentic. Myriad accounts on X and elsewhere, like the one below, have cast the image as evidence of Walz being a predator:

While the above version of the photo is AI-enhanced, it originates from a real photo and appears to be authentic. The Daily Mail shared the original version of the above image in an apparently otherwise unrelated story about Walz's history with China.

As originally published, the photo was described by the Mail as "an undated photo from the Mankato West High School Alumni for Walz Facebook Group," depicting Walz "on a class trip." The phrase "up the ying yang" was, for some reason, quite popular in the 1990s. There is nothing obviously nefarious going on in the photo.

The claims at issue in this story — those that went viral in October 2024 —  followed months of innuendo about Walz, including the malicious interpretation of the above photo, potentially explaining some of these new allegations' virality despite their significant evidentiary shortcomings.

The Bottom Line

Despite a flurry of online misinformation online, no credible evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim that Walz ever sexually abused any of his students. 

The allegations against Walz that arose in October 2024 are based, in one case, on forged evidence and, in the other case, on an AI-created deep-fake video linked to a Russian propaganda unit that hijacked the identity of an American citizen.