BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – A former park ranger said Friday that Montana U.S. Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy lied about a gunshot wound that the candidate said came from fighting in Afghanistan.
Former Ranger Kim Peach’s claim that Sheehy shot himself during a family outing in Montana was immediately dismissed by Sheehy and his allies as a smear campaign by Democrats in a race expected to help decide control of the Senate .
But with the election less than three weeks away, it adds to the immense pressure the political newcomer already faced in challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
Sheehy is a former US Navy SEAL and his military record is a key part of his bid for office. During stump speeches and in a book Sheehy published last year, he says he was injured several times in combat, including in the arm in 2012.
Sheehy received a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in a separate combat incident and also received a Bronze Star.
A campaign spokesman for Sheehy said Peach was a partisan Democrat who advanced a “defamatory story.”
“Anyone who tries to distract from the fact that Tim Sheehy enlisted in the war as a young man and spent most of his twenties in one of the most dangerous places in the world is either a partisan hack, a journalist with an agenda, or downright a disgusting person,” said spokesperson Katie Martin.
He has been under scrutiny for the arm wound since April, when The Washington Post anonymously quoted a Glacier National Park ranger saying that Sheehy accidentally shot himself in 2015 while traveling with his family and pulled his gun out of a vehicle fell and fired when it hit the car. parked in a parking lot at Logan Pass. The ranger quoted in the story was Peach.
Sheehy was cited by Peach and paid a $525 fine for illegally discharging a firearm in Glacier, state records show.
The Republican candidate said in response to the April story that he lied to the park ranger — not about his injuries in Afghanistan.
Sheehy said he fell while hiking near Glacier and injured his arm, then made up the story about the gunshot wound to cover up the fact that the 2012 incident may have been friendly fire. He said he did not want members of his SEAL unit in Afghanistan to face any consequences.
With absentee voting underway in Montana and Sheehy primed for a possible victory, Peach, a Democrat, said Friday that he “couldn’t let him get away with something like that without the truth being told.”
Peach said he interviewed Sheehy at the hospital where he was being treated for the gunshot wound.
“He was clearly ashamed of it at the time. And you know, he admitted what I was there for: the gun going off in the park,” Peach told The Associated Press. ‘He knows the truth and the truth is not complicated. It’s when you start lying that things get complicated. ”
His decision to go public was previously reported by the Post.
Peach worked as a park ranger for over thirty years and is now retired. He lives in a small town near Glacier. He posted a photo of himself on social media wearing a “Make America Wrong Again” hat and said he is voting for Democrats.
He denied any connection to the Tester campaign or other Democratic organizations.
Tester’s campaign has been running ads in recent weeks criticizing Sheehy for lying about the gunshot wound. A campaign spokesman had no immediate comment Friday.
The Montana Democratic Party seized on Peach’s latest comments as a “firsthand account” of what happened to Sheehy.
But Mike Berg, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, dismissed the latest iteration of the allegations against Sheehy. He suggested it is a sign of Democrats’ desperation as they fear Tester will lose.
“It is the last gasp of a career politician who sees that his career is about to end,” Berg said.
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