![\"Watkins](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Watkins-trump-500x281.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nEarly last week, this person, Alicia Watkins, presented herself to presidential candidate, Donald Trump, as a journalist with press credentials. Somehow she had convinced someone at the Trump campaign that she was a reporter for Troops Media, so they gave her credentials. Five seconds of investigation later determined that she wasn’t, but by that time Donald had hired her for his campaign staff. She is fairly attractive, so I’m guessing that was a major factor in Trump’s decision, but it is what it is. Anyway, folks began to question her story immediately. It turns out that she has been on the Oprah Show claiming to be a homeless Air Force veteran. She has claimed that she was injured in the 9-11-2001 attack on the Pentagon, she has also claimed that she was injured in an IED explosion when she was stationed in Afghanistan. So, you know, being the diligent reporters that we are, we applied for a FOIA on her military records.<\/p>\n
So while we were doing the background, John Q. Public<\/a>, a blog about Air Force issues, wrote their own breathless piece about her. They admitted that she may have been at the Pentagon and they admitted that she was in Afghanistan in 2006. So I thought they had a FOIA on her, so I wrote to them. Turns out that no, they didn’t have a FOIA, so I’m not sure where they got their information. In the meantime, Watkins got wind of the fact that people were looking into her background, so she reached out to our buddy, Bulldog at Guardian of Valor. She promised him documentation for her claims. In fact, she sent this letter to him;<\/p>\n It’a letter from an unknown Air Force officer attesting to her status as a wounded warrior. The signature block and contact information are blacked out, so it’s pretty useless. We were in the process of checking on the letter, when the Air Force Times<\/a> decided to interject themselves into the process, they claim that they have talked with the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas.<\/p>\n In 2014, Watkins appeared in a news segment aired by WJLA-TV, Washington’s ABC affiliate, touting the therapeutic benefits of riding horses. She repeated the story about having suffered physical and emotional injuries due to combat, telling the WJLA reporter that she served in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I experienced IEDs, suicide bombers,” Watkins said in that report.<\/p>\n Watkins deployed to Qatar in 2003 and to Afghanistan in 2006, Dickerson said. There is no record of her deploying to Iraq in the information AFPC provided.<\/p>\n Watkins joined the Air Force in 1998 and retired as a staff sergeant after nine years and six months of service, Dickerson said. She was in the information management career field, working as a network engineer.<\/p>\n Watkins served at the Pentagon from October 2000 to July 2004, time that included her deployment to Qatar, Dickerson [a spokesman for the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas] said. She also served at Los Angeles Air Force Base from July 2004 to her retirement in May 2008, time that included her deployment to Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to the Air Force Times, there is no evidence that she was injured either in the Pentagon, or Afghanistan but she wore the Purple Heart on her Air Force uniform during some of her media appearances;<\/p>\n I suspect that the imperative to discredit a woman of color who supports Trump overrides most of the cautions that everyone would normally exercise in this situation. While I don’t think that Watkins is being entirely truthful, I don’t have the proof in front of me which tempers my writing at this point. We’re still waiting for the National Personnel Records Center to answer our request. <\/p>\n I will ask your help in verifying the document above, if any of my readers has experience in the Air Force wounded warrior community. Personally, I don’t see a need to even create a document like that, unless the intent is to deceive. But that’s just a feeling I have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"Watkins](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Watkins-Wounded-Warrior-244x333.jpg\")
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