This is a rather peculiar story involving current Democratic Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and I will offer a rare tip of my hat to the New York Times for uncovering it because they had to follow an obscure paperwork trail down the rabbit hole to find it. As a young man, Moore attended Valley Forge Military Academy and later joined the United States Army Reserve. Unlike Kamala's running mate, Wes Moore served a tour of duty fighting in Afghanistan. None of this appears to be in doubt and we thank him for his service. But that's where the story becomes a bit more "complicated." After completing his service and doing some work in the private sector, Moore applied for a White House fellowship in 2006 serving under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. On his application, he included a detail saying that he had been awarded the Bronze Star for heroic or meritorious achievement or service. The problem is, he was never actually awarded the Bronze Star. So was this a case of stolen valor? Moore claims that it was an honest misunderstanding. (CBS News) 

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Thursday he made "an honest mistake" in failing to correct a White House fellowship application 18 years ago when he wrote he had received a Bronze Star for his military service in Afghanistan though he never ended up receiving it, after the New York Times obtained a copy of the application and reported on it.

The newspaper, which obtained the document as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, reported that Moore made the claim on the application in 2006 when he was 27.

In a statement, the governor wrote that he had been encouraged to fill out the application for the fellowship by his deputy brigade commander serving overseas in the Army.

If this were simply some whopper of a fictional tale that Moore made up out of whole cloth, that would definitely be a case of stolen valor. We should honor the service of all of our military veterans, particularly those who served in combat. (We're looking at you, Tim Walz.) But earning the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, any of the Service Crosses, the Purple Heart, or the Medal of Honor puts you in a class that towers above the rest. It means that you demonstrated bravery and leadership in the face of peril. Being a pretender in that fashion could arguably be considered far worse an act of stolen valor than what Walz did.

But that simply may not be the case with Wes Moore. When he was initially applying for the fellowship, his deputy brigade commander informed him that he had been nominated to receive the Bronze Star. Two other senior combat officers reportedly signed off on the nomination. It looked like a sure thing, so the deputy brigade commander suggested that he include the award on his fellowship application to improve his chances of being accepted. It was only later that Moore learned that he had not received final approval and had never been granted the award. By then he had already begun his fellowship at the White House, but he never went back and corrected his application after the fact.

Moore described the news that he hadn't received the Bronze Star as a "disappointment," but is this really all that big of a deal? It's not as if he was out on the campaign trail boasting about his meritorious wartime service. He was filling out an application for a junior position in politics and he'd already been awarded the position anyway. How many of us can honestly say that if we learned of such a disappointing detail we would rack our brains trying to think of any place and every place we might have written down a claim to receiving the award and retroactively correct the record? Sure, that would be the correct thing to do if you're a serious stickler for details, but the longer we travel down the road of life, the more of a paper trail we tend to leave behind. That sort of thing could make for a lot of work dealing with corrections.

I'm honestly having a hard time ginning up much anger over this news. It seems more like an unintentional foul than any attempt at inflating his legend or an attempt at deception. Wes Moore served his country honorably in the military and even went into combat for us. The fact that his deputy brigade commander put in his name for the award and two other senior officers endorsed him suggests that his service was indeed honorable and perhaps even heroic, even if he didn't eventually wind up receiving the award. We shouldn't be raking him over the coals too badly for what essentially boils down to a bookkeeping error, at least in my opinion.