“It was crazy,” Sheehy, 38, added in a podcast interview last November. “And to be honest, we got overexposed.” As a result, he said, “sometimes I hate saying I was a Navy SEAL because I was like, ‘Oh great, I’m so sick of hearing about Navy SEALs.’”
But as he campaigns in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races, which could decide control of the chamber, Sheehy — a decorated veteran who earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star — is hardly circumspect about his work as a Navy SEAL.
He lists it as the first line in all his online profiles. He splashed it across his campaign website. He mentioned it nearly 70 times in his 2023 memoir. He told the audience at a Republican women’s meeting in Montana last fall, “I’m a war hero, a job creator, a philanthropist.”
In touting his time as a SEAL, however, Sheehy has sometimes contradicted himself and made puzzling statements about aspects of his Navy activity.
Most notably, Sheehy, who now owns an aerial firefighting business, has told voters that he has a bullet in his arm from combat in Afghanistan. But he told a National Park Service ranger in 2015 that he had accidentally shot himself when his Colt .45 revolver fell and discharged in Montana’s Glacier National Park, according to a record of the episode filed in court. When asked about that account last week, Sheehy told The Washington Post that he had lied to the ranger to protect himself and his former platoonmates from scrutiny over an old bullet wound that he said he had suffered in Afghanistan in 2012.
This week, after The Post sent new questions to Sheehy’s campaign, the candidate posted part of the inquiry on social media and warned of a “hit piece attacking me for serving my country.” Katie Martin, a campaign spokeswoman, did not respond to those questions but issued a statement saying, in part, “Tim Sheehy humbly served our nation with honor as a Navy SEAL. He has never called himself a hero, but he served alongside plenty of them. His military service is well documented and is a matter of public record.”
Since The Post first reported Sheehy’s 2015 encounter with the park ranger, some Republicans in Montana and nationally have rallied around him. But VoteVets, a liberal political action committee focused on electing veterans, said it was “deeply troubled that a fellow veteran may have misrepresented aspects of their service while trying to win a political campaign” and called on Sheehy to release underlying medical records.
In discussing his Navy career, Sheehy has highlighted the work he did with the unit that killed bin Laden, SEAL Team Six, also sometimes called “Task Force Blue,” tying himself in the process to one of its darkest episodes, the death of an aid worker in a failed rescue attempt.
Finally, Sheehy has offered different explanations for his exit from the Navy — variously saying he left because of wounds from Afghanistan and because of a heart problem triggered by an underwater training mission in the Pacific.
All political candidates must promote their work experience. The blend of secrecy and valor central to SEAL activity makes that task more promising — but also more perilous. Part of the official SEAL ethos states, “I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions.”
Still, Sheehy joins a growing number of former SEALs discussing that work as they campaign to win votes. In the decade since Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) became the first former Navy…
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