Podcast host Megyn Kelly pressed Republican Montana Senate candidate and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy about a gunshot wound he claims he received in open combat during a Friday interview.
Throughout his campaign, Sheehy claimed he was shot in 2012 from friendly fire while serving as a Navy Seal in Afghanistan.
Questions arose after the Washington Post reported that Sheehy admitted to lying about the injury to a National Park Ranger in 2015 by telling him the wound was “self-inflicted.”
When Kelly asked if Sheehy shot himself in Montana Glacier National Park, he firmly said, “No.”
“I fell and injured my arm when we were hiking. So that’s why I went [to the hospital], because, you know, could feel the bullet get this large when I, when I, when I fell, and fell on the arm, you could feel the bullet get dislodged,” Sheehy said. “And then I went to the ER to say, ‘Hey, you know, look, you know, I’ve got internal bland going on here. I’ve injured my arm. Can you take a look at the can you take a look at this, make sure there’s nothing serious going on here.’”
He said the law enforcement told him the treatment had to be filed as a “gunshot wound” which is why he made up the story shared with Park Ranger Kim Peach. Sheehy subsequently payed a $525 fine for the fable as it’s illegal to discharge a weapon in a national park.
However, lying to a federal officer can also warrant criminal charges. When Sheehy explained the events to Megyn, she said it was “confusing.”
Sheehy’s Democratic opponent, Jon Tester, has taken advantage of the variety of narratives presented to discredit the candidate in ads and label him as “untrustworthy.”
The Montana Senate race will be crucial to determine which party controls Congress’s upper house. With three days left until Election Day, Sheehy has a 4.8 percentage point lead in the state according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s aggregate of polls.
The Hill has reached out to Sheehy for comment.
