Republicans are pushing back on critics of Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy by pointing out their histories of supporting Democrats and making partisan statements.
Dave Madden, the former Navy SEAL who claims that Sheehy lied about a wartime gunshot wound, had expressed his delight earlier this year when Sheehy posted an unimpressive fundraising report.
And Kim Peach, the park ranger who says that Sheehy shot himself accidentally in a parking lot in 2015 — contradicting Sheehy’s claim that he was shot in combat — once mocked former President Trump by posing for a picture while wearing a hat that said, “Make Lying Wrong Again.”
These two individuals are under scrutiny themselves now that Sheehy’s military record is the target of Democratic ads relying on their claims.
Polls show Sheehy leading Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in a tight race that could determine which party controls the Senate next year.
A new Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey of Montana voters found Sheehy leading Tester 50 percent to 46 percent, slightly more than the poll’s 3-percentage point margin of error.
Sheehy, a decorated former Navy SEAL, who earned a Bronze Star with Valor and a Purple Heart, is being called out for claiming that he was shot in the arm during a firefight in Afghanistan because he also reported to the National Park Service in 2015 that he had shot himself in the arm accidentally.
Sheehy’s military record is now the target of attack ads from his opponent, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), and from Senate Majority PAC, the Senate Democrats’ biggest super PAC.
Sheehy now says he fabricated the story of shooting himself in the parking lot of Glacier National Park to avoid triggering an investigation of a SEAL teammate who might have hit him with friendly fire. He said he re-aggravated the bullet injury after slipping and falling while at Glacier.
But Sheehy’s story is being disputed by Madden, a former SEAL who trained with him, and Peach, the park ranger who filed the report about the incident at Glacier.
Madden, who trained with Sheehy but served in a separate unit during their deployments to Afghanistan, told The New York Times in a recent interview that Sheehy would’ve told his comrades about being shot in the field.
“Tim and I had about as close a working relationship in the platoon as possible. So when he says he took a bullet in the arm in Afghanistan, we all know it’s not true. We would have seen it, we would have heard about it,” he told The New York Times.
Madden also disputes Sheehy’s contention that his SEAL teammates would have been investigated for a friendly fire incident.
Republicans say Madden has a personal axe to grind with Sheehy and never had a close friendship with him.
“This new relationship Dave Madden has invented in his head with Tim Sheehy is a pure work of fiction. Full stop. Dave Madden has been making false, disparaging, defamatory statements about both Tim and President Trump for months on social media. It is sad that Dave’s increasingly radical political views would lead him to lie about a fellow SEAL, but this isn’t surprising to his fellow SEALs who served with him. He lacked character, integrity and was not cut out for the job,” said a spokesperson for the Sheehy for Montana campaign.
In a tweet posted in April but later deleted, Madden expressed delight over Sheehy’s unimpressive fundraising report.
“Seeing Tim fumble warms my cockles,” he posted.
He also urged his social media followers on X not to vote for former Navy SEALs such as Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).
“Stop voting for SEALs please. Signed, a SEAL who worked with every one of these fuckwits,” Madden posted under a screenshot of Crenshaw arguing at a hearing against relying on solar energy because “at night, it just doesn’t work.”
Campaign finance records show that Madden, a registered Democrat, has given money to liberals such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
He also gave money to Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns and to Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC running the new ad against Sheehy, in 2020.
Republicans say that Peach, the park ranger who told The New York Times that he is “100 percent sure” that Sheehy shot himself in 2015, also has a partisan motive to malign Sheehy.
The Associated Press reported that Peach, now retired and lives in a small town near Glacier, once posted a photo of himself on social media wearing a “Make Lying Wrong Again” hat and acknowledged that he votes for Democrats.
Peach told The AP that he decided to come forward publicly about his interaction with Sheehy at Glacier in 2015 because he “couldn’t let him get away with something like that without the truth being told.”
He reiterated his claim that Sheehy shot himself by accident in 2015.
“At the time, he was obviously embarrassed about it. And you know, he admitted to what I was there for — the gun going off in the park,” he told the AP. “He knows the truth and the truth isn’t complicated. It’s when you start lying things get complicated.”
Republicans say the allegations that Sheehy lied about being shot in Afghanistan come from a “well-worn political playbook.”
“In smearing Tim Sheehy’s military record, Democrats and the media are dusting off a well-worn political playbook they developed during the Trump-era. They are ignoring the facts and trotting out left-wing partisans with wild last-minute claims to smear Sheehy before he has a chance to respond. The tactics being used against Tim Sheehy echo those employed against Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. Montanans should reject these disgusting left-wing tactics,” said Mike Berg, the communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Berg pointed out that two SEALs who served with Sheehy didn’t question his integrity when interviewed by The New York Times.
“He is 100 percent a credible, do-the-right-thing guy,” Justin Sheehan told The Times.
The NRSC spokesman said these former colleagues should be considered more credible character witnesses than Sheehy’s Democratic-leaning critics.
“I’ll take the word of SEALs who were actually with Tim at the time he got shot over [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer’s [D-N.Y.] lackeys any day of the week,” Berg said.
Sheehy’s campaign revealed in a television ad launched Friday that he received the Purple Heart after being injured by an Improvised Explosive Device.
One of Sheehy’s former SEAL colleagues told The Times on condition of anonymity that he recalled Sheehy speaking about an IED blast and mentioning he had been struck in a friendly fire incident.
Sheehan and Zohosky said they did not recall a discussion of a gunshot with Sheehy.
