Montana GOP Senate candidate says he lied to ranger about gunshot wound in 2015 -- (Poll: How did that bullet get in his arm?)

[essentialsaltes]

Tim Sheehy, a charismatic former Navy SEAL who is the Republican candidate in a U.S. Senate race in Montana that could determine control of the chamber, has cited a gunshot wound he received in combat that he said left a bullet in his right arm as evidence of his toughness.

It was one of several inconsistent accounts Sheehy has shared about being shot while deployed. And in October 2015, more than a year after he left active duty, he told a different story.

After a family visit to Montana’s Glacier National Park, he told a National Park Service ranger that he accidentally shot himself in the right arm that day when his Colt .45 revolver fell and discharged while he was loading his vehicle in the park, according to a record of the episode filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana.

The self-inflicted gunshot left a bullet lodged in Sheehy’s right forearm, according to the written description accompanying the federal citation that the ranger, a federal law enforcement officer, gave Sheehy for illegally discharging his weapon in a national park. The citation said the description was based on Sheehy’s telling of events.

Asked this week about the citation, which has not been previously reported, Sheehy told The Washington Post that the statement he gave the ranger was a lie. He said he made up the story about the gun going off to protect himself and his former platoonmates from facing a potential military investigation into an old bullet wound that he said he got in Afghanistan in 2012. He said he did not know for certain whether the wound was the result of friendly fire or from enemy ammunition, and said he never reported the incident to his superiors.

Sheehy said he did not shoot himself in the park in 2015, but rather fell and hurt himself on a hike, necessitating a trip to an emergency room, where he said he told hospital staff he had a bullet in his arm, triggering his interview with the ranger.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Well that's something. How badly do you have to break your arm in order to convince somebody that it looks like a gunshot?

 

[Bumble Bee]

Well that's something. How badly do you have to break your arm in order to convince somebody that it looks like a gunshot?

He probably had to disclose the bullet wound due to imaging, rather than due to it looking like a gunshot wound. I wouldn’t be surprised if he intentionally cut his skin to make it appear as a bullet wound.

 

[iluvatar5150]

He probably had to disclose the bullet wound due to imaging, rather than due to it looking like a gunshot wound. I wouldn’t be surprised if he intentionally cut his skin to make it appear as a bullet wound.

Disclosing it is fine. The way the article is written, it sounds like he told the ER staff, who then called the Ranger, and it was the Ranger's investigation that prompted the ?lie?. At that point, he'd have already been seen by medical staff, who'd have known that the injury wasn't new. If he was concerned about the age of the wound being discovered, wouldn't he have expected his medical report to have also made it into the investigation?

 

[Goonie]

Lol! He accidentally shot himself in the park. The idea that he faked it to hide an old war injury is absurd!

 

[Hank77]

Lol! He accidentally shot himself in the park. The idea that he faked it to hide an old war injury is absurd!

Or someone else accidentally shot him sometime since he was in the military and he's covering for them. Maybe one of his kids?

 

[iluvatar5150]

Or someone else accidentally shot him sometime since he was in the military and he's covering for them. Maybe one of his kids?

I had that thought, too.

 

[Arcangl86]

So either he's lying now about how he got the wound, or he's admitting to lying to law enforcement in the course of a criminal investigation. There's a name for that, Obstruction of Justice. Either way, this is not somebody that should be elected to office.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Senate Candidate Tells Different Story of Navy Discharge Than His Book Does​

Tim Sheehy, the Navy SEAL running to unseat Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester, has repeatedly told voters he was “discharged” from the military for medical reasons, owing to wounds sustained in service.

But the Republican’s own autobiography, published just last year, says otherwise; he wrote that he became disillusioned with military personnel policies and left of his own accord after being injured in a training accident.

--

In April, as Sheehy’s campaign to unseat Tester warmed up, The Washington Postreported that the version of Sheehy’s departure from the Navy in his autobiography differed from a résumé he submitted to the Montana legislature in 2021 that said he was “medically separated from active duty due to wounds received in Afghanistan.”

A spokesperson for Sheehy told the paper: “Sheehy was honorably discharged from the Navy after being declared medically unfit to continue to serve as a Navy SEAL.”

But that statement is also contradicted by Sheehy’s own written account: He says he chose to leave the Navy rather than complete a spell of desk jobs before a possible return to active duty.