A former Park Service ranger said Friday the U.S Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy The Montana native lied about a gunshot wound the candidate said came from fighting in Afghanistan — an allegation that has nagged the Republican campaign for months.
Former ranger Kim Peach’s claim that Sheehy shot himself on a family trip in Montana was quickly dismissed by Sheehy and his allies as a campaign of commentary designed to help decide a race for Democrats. Senate control.
But with the election less than three weeks away, the political news is adding to the pressure it already faces as it challenges three-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Sheehy is a former US Navy SEAL and his military record is the focus of his bid for the position. In Stump lectures and in a book published last year by Sheehy, he recounts being wounded several times in combat, including in 2012 in the arm.
Sheehy was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds sustained in a combat incident and was also awarded the Bronze Star.
A Sheehy campaign spokesman said Peach was a partisan Democrat pushing a “defamatory story.”
“Anyone who tries to take away 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 just plain disgusting,” spokeswoman Katie Martin said.
The arm wound has been under investigation since April, when The Washington Post anonymously told a Glacier National Park ranger that Sheehy accidentally shot himself in 2015 while traveling with his family when his gun fell from a vehicle and fired. land in a Logan Pass parking lot. The ranger mentioned in the story was Peach.
Sheehy Peach was cited and fined $525 for unlawful discharge of a firearm in Glacier, government records show.
The Republican candidate said in response to the April story that he lied to the park ranger about not being injured in Afghanistan.
Sheehy said she fell while hiking in Glacier and injured her arm, then made up the story about the gunshot wound to cover the 2012 incident as a friendly incident. He said he did not want members of his SEAL unit in Afghanistan to suffer any consequences.
With absentee voting underway in Montana and Sheehy poised for a potential victory, Peach, a Democrat, said Friday that she “couldn’t let him do something like this, without telling the truth.”
Peach said he interviewed Sheehy at the hospital where he was treated for the gunshot wound.
“At the time, he was obviously embarrassed. And you know, he accepted what I was for: he hit the gun in the park,” Peach told The Associated Press. “He knows the truth and the truth is not complicated. When you start lying, things get complicated.”
The decision to go public was announced earlier by Posta.
Peach worked as a park ranger for over three decades and is now retired. He lives in a small town near the glacier. He posted a photo of himself on social media wearing a “Make America Wrong Again” hat and said he votes for Democrats.
He denied any ties to the Tester campaign or other Democratic organizations.
Tester’s campaign has run ads in recent weeks criticizing Sheehy for lying about his gunshot wound. A campaign spokesman was not immediately available for comment Friday.
The Montana Democratic Party capitalized on Peach’s recent comments by giving Sheehy a “first-hand account” of what happened.
But National Republican Senatorial Committee communications director Mike Berg dismissed the latest iteration of the allegations against Sheehy. He suggested it’s a sign of desperation among Democrats, who fear Tester will lose.
“It’s the last gasp of a career politician who sees his career coming to an end,” Berg said.
