A new report has raised additional questions about the origins of a gunshot wound that Montana Republican U.S. Senate candidate and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy said he received during a 2012 firefight in Afghanistan.
On Friday, The New York Times published an account based on interviews with two new sources, a former Navy Seal who served with Sheehy and the Glacier National Park ranger who responded in 2015 to a report that Sheehy was struck in the forearm by an accidental discharge of his pistol. Sheehy later said he lied to that ranger about his wound because he didn’t want to trigger an investigation into the 2012 incident.
Click here to read The New York Times report.
Sheehy has discussed the injury, which he says left a bullet in his forearm, on the campaign trail and wrote about it in his memoir. Questions arose about his account in April, when The Washington Post first reported on Sheehy’s 2015 citation in Glacier National Park for the accidental discharge of the weapon. It was then that Sheehy told a park ranger that he had been struck by a bullet in the forearm after dropping his Colt .45, according to the paper.
The Post also reported that three years later, Sheehy went to a hospital after falling during a hike, re-aggravating his bullet wound. When hospital officials told him they would need to contact law enforcement because of the gunshot wound, even though it wasn’t fresh, Sheehy said he had lied to the park ranger in 2015 in an effort to protect his platoon mates because the injury may have come from friendly fire in 2012 in Afghanistan.
The Times reported that a former SEAL, Dave Madden, who now lives in the Pacific Northwest, said Sheehy never mentioned the gunshot wound when they reconnected during a stateside conversation in July 2012. Madden told the paper they swapped war stories with no mention of wounds, and Sheey’s sleeves were rolled up at the time and showed no evidence of a bullet wound.
Madden is a registered Democrat who has criticized Sheehy online recently, and Sheehy’s lawyers told The Times that the conversation Madden referenced never happened, and his only goal is to make Sheehy look bad.
The Times also spoke to Kim Peach, the park ranger who cited Sheehy at Glacier National Park in 2015. Peach told the paper he first encountered Sheehy at a hospital after receiving the report of the gun discharge, and he found Sheehy with a bandage on his arm. He said Sheehy’s gun had five rounds in it, with one spent round. He said Sheehy was remorseful and apologized for causing any problems.
Peach told The Times that he was “100 percent sure” that Sheehy shot himself that day at Glacier. Sheehy was charged and agreed to pay a $525 fine for the incident.
In a statement, Sheehy's campaign disputed Peach's account as partisan.
“Kim Peach, whose social media profile picture attacks President Trump, is clearly a partisan. Kim’s story has shifted numerous times as he has continued pushing this defamatory story to make it fit his narrative. Bottom line is this is a last-minute pathetic attempt by Jon Tester, through an activist, to try to disparage an American Warrior who fought for our country and laid his life on the line for our freedoms. Anyone trying to take away from the fact that Tim Sheehy signed up for war as a young man and spent most of his 20s in some of the most dangerous places in the world is either a partisan hack, a journalist with an agenda, or outright a disgusting person. Tim has been and will continue to be a humble servant of our great nation, our veterans, and the men and women he admirably served with. He got into this race to put our country first and he won’t ever let any of this slander stop him from fighting every day as Montana's next U.S. Senator," a campaign spokesman said.
MTN News has not independently confirmed the accounts of Madden or Peach.
Sheehy is seeking to unseat incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who is vying for his fourth term. Sheehy leads in most recent polls, and experts believe the winner of the race could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
