Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and one of GOP’s star recruits of the 2024 election cycle, admitted to The Washington Post that he lied to a National Park Service ranger about being shot during a 2015 incident at the state’s Glacier National Park.
The admission comes after Sheehy, a wealthy aerospace executive who’s aiming to take on three-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, had previously given inconsistent statements about how he was shot in his right arm.
In October 2015, Sheehy informed a ranger that he had shot himself in the right arm after his Colt .45 revolver fell to the ground and discharged, according to records filed in the US District Court for the District of Montana.
According to the Post, a description of the incident contained within a federal citation noted that the gunshot left a bullet in Sheehy’s right arm. The written details of the citation, which was issued by the ranger, were based on Sheehy’s recounting of the incident.
Sheehy ended up paying a $525 fine over his gun discharging in a national park, a decision that at the time was based on his report to the ranger.
When asked by the Post about the ranger’s citation, Sheehy said he fabricated the story about the gun discharging to shield himself and his former platoon members from being probed over a gunshot wound that he said he received while in Afghanistan in 2012.
Sheehy told the newspaper that he fell and injured himself during a 2015 hike at Glacier National Park, which prompted a hospital visit. While at the hospital, he informed the staff that there was a bullet lodged in his arm, which led to him being questioned by the ranger.
“I guess the only thing I’m guilty of is admitting to doing something I never did,” Sheehy told the Post, affirming that his gun never went off at the national park.
And Sheehy defended what he said was his attempt to keep his former platoon members out of any investigations. He told the Post he was unsure if his bullet wound was the result of friendly fire or from an enemy.
“It was a small price to pay to make sure that a whole team of really great Americans didn’t get dragged through the mud over this,” he told the newspaper.
While it is a crime to lie to a federal officer, the Post reported that the statute of limitations regarding the incident has expired.
Daniel Watkins, an attorney for Sheehy, said Sheehy had not impeded a law enforcement probe because no crime had taken place at the national park, according to the Post.
Sheehy’s admission came as inconsistencies piled up regarding how he was shot while serving in Afghanistan.
The Sheehy campaign provided an x-ray to the Post with the condition that it could be sent to experts but not published by the newspaper. A professor and longtime trauma surgeon who reviewed the x-ray told the newspaper that he found it “doubtful” that Sheehy’s wound came from an assault weapon — and that it likely came from a handgun.
In Sheehy’s 2023 memoir, “Mudslingers,” he wrote that he had been shot once while serving in Afghanistan. But in another passage, he wrote that he had been shot multiple times, according to the Post.
Sheehy was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for separate events for serving in combat overseas, and neither award is in dispute, according to the newspaper.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Sheehy’s campaign said that the GOP candidate “won’t ever let any of this slander stop him from fighting every day as your next US Senator.”
“While Montanans respect his selfless sacrifice for our country and commend it, because he is a Republican running for office, the liberal elite misinformation machine is going to great lengths to question and attack it,” the statement continued.
Business Insider reached out to the Sheehy campaign for further comment.
Sheehy is heavily favored to win the June 4 GOP Senate primary and has been highly touted by Washington Republicans as one of their strongest candidates to date against Tester, who for nearly two decades has withstood the political headwinds for Democrats in conservative-leaning Montana.
A Survey USA poll conducted in February showed Tester leading Sheehy 49%-40%, while an Emerson College survey released in March showed Tester with a narrower 44%-42% lead over the GOP candidate.
