Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy in Montana gave varying explanations in a new interview Friday for a gunshot wound he suffered to his arm — a controversy that has plagued his campaign against Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana).
Last month, Kim Peach, a former US Park Service ranger, came out publicly and said Sheehy accidentally shot himself with a handgun during a 2015 family outing in Montana’s Glacier National Park — contradicting the former Navy SEAL’s campaign biography, which states he was “wounded in combat.”
Sheehy recently did just that claimed that he lied to the ranger in 2015 and told Peach that he had accidentally shot himself, to hide the fact that he may have suffered the gunshot wound in a friendly fire incident while deployed overseas.
Asked Friday if there were any medical records to prove his story, Sheehy told former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, there is “no extensive medical record” from his visit to the hospital emergency room. He said he had “internal bleeding” after the bullet dislodged in his arm after he fell while walking in the park.
“There’s not much to discuss,” said Sheehy, who called the story “a distraction.”
“So confusing,” Kelly responded about her during an interview with Sheehy SiriusXM radio program.
Sheehy has also given conflicting explanations for who may have been responsible for the gunshot wound.
In his interview with Kelly on Friday, the 37-year-old Republican Senate hopeful suggested he may have been shot by an Afghan ally in a friendly fire incident. He called the environment “messy” at the time and described the challenges of working with Afghan forces, saying it was “very, very common that Afghans, intentionally or unintentionally, would end up shooting their own troops.”
“It was a dangerous environment when you’re dealing with actual hostile forces… but half the time you also have to have one eye looking at our partner forces,” he added.
But in his 2023 memoir, Sheehy wrote that he was “hit by a friendly flare” by a fellow SEAL he wanted to protect from repercussions.
“I didn’t want the teammate who fired the shot, a total stud who would go on to have a successful career as a SEAL, to be punished officially or reputationally — for an accident that was in no way his fault,” Sheehy wrote. in the book. “It wasn’t even a tough or dangerous mission; It was a milk run, just like this training flight, but it went wrong quickly.”
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When the post asked Speaking about that passage in his book in April, Sheehy said he was unsure whether he was shot by friendly fire or by whom, and described an incident in which his team came under fire at night.
“Just to be clear, I don’t know where the bullet came from,” Sheehy said. “Sometimes people find that hard to believe, but in Hollywood they make it look like a gunfight, everyone knows exactly what’s going on. … It just doesn’t work that way.”
Meanwhile, the ranger told Peach The New York Times earlier this month, he was “100 percent sure (Sheehy) shot himself that day” in 2015. He recalled discharging Sheehy’s gun at the time and “finding five bullets and the casing of one that had been fired,” as the Times reported.
Republicans have dismissed the claim on the grounds that Peach is a history of support Democrats.
Polls show Sheehy leading Tester in a crucial race that could determine which party controls the Senate next year. The three-term incumbent senator is trying to upset a state Donald Trump won by 16 points in the 2020 election.
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