BREAKING: Tim Sheehy Caught Plagiarizing Sections of His Book
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, September 23, 2024
CONTACT
rehm@mtdems.org
“The Daily Montanan found four instances where Sheehy’s work is nearly verbatim, if not identical, to an older known source”
Helena, MT – The “untrustworthy behavior” from Tim Sheehy never stops. Ultrawealthy out-of-stater Tim Sheehy has even been dishonest with Montanans about who wrote his book: new reporting from the Daily Montananreveals that he plagiarized at least four sections of the book.
With sources ranging from the San Marino Tribune to Wikipedia, Sheehy was found to have made very minor, if any, changes to the source material that appear without citations, with three of them not even appearing in the book’s bibliography.
These are far from the first headaches Mudslingers has given Tim Sheehy. He spent months on the campaign trail saying “100%” of his book proceeds went to “fallen firefighters” and their families, when in actuality, the proceeds also went to a D.C. lobbying group that Sheehy co-founded to benefit his company, Bridger Aerospace.
In addition, The Guardian revealed that Tim Sheehy did not submit Mudslingers to the Department of Defense for proper vetting and review, which is necessary “to ensure information damaging to the national security is not inadvertently disclosed.”
Check out the Daily Montanan’s reporting here:
Daily Montanan: Problematic prose: Senate candidate Sheehy’s book appears to contain four plagiarized portions
September 20, 2024
Darrell Ehrlick
[The] book which has helped solidify [Sheehy’s] place as a candidate and authority on aerial firefighting seems to have at least four different passages that were plagiarized — sourced, but not credited in the book, according to an investigation by the Daily Montanan.
The Daily Montanan put Sheehy’s book through commercially available software that scans texts against a massive store of other published and online sources to compare passages. The software is commonly used by publishers, academic institutions and researchers to check for originality, possible copyright or intellectual property violations, or to find the origins of a particular fact or statement.
The Daily Montanan reached out to the Sheehy campaign for further explanation, but heard nothing back from it.
The Daily Montanan also reached out to Permuted Press, the book’s publisher, with a list of questions including some pertaining to the vetting, writing and editing process, but it did not respond either.
It is not the first time the details of Sheehy’s life before politics have come under scrutiny for their truthfulness.
Sheehy’s past, including a gunshot wound that may have been sustained in Glacier National Park, claims of parachute training over Glacier, and his business dealings including his aerial firefighting company, Bridger Aerospace, have come under fire.
It’s also not the first time that Sheehy has remained silent when confronted with difficult questions. Sheehy has not openly commented or explained a recording of him in which he repeated on different occasions disparaging comments about Native Americans drinking, even after being called upon by Montana’s tribal leaders to disavow, apologize or explain the comments.
Even the book itself has come under scrutiny: It promises that all of the proceeds from telling the story of aerial firefighters will go back to supporting them. However, as other media outlets have reported, including Business Insider, it appears that the proceeds of the book go back to an aerial firefighting lobbying company which Sheehy himself founded, which in turn, works on behalf of his own company, raising questions about whether the money is really being funneled right back to him.
According to Sheehy’s own writing, he penned “Mudslingers” in his spare time and then had it published. He described it in the prologue as a way to collect and tell the story of American aerial firefighting, combining the history and practice of aerial firefighting with his own experience as an aerial firefighter.
The book runs 309-pages long and does include a bibliography and source list. One of the four problematic passages discovered by the Daily Montanan was included generally in the list; the other three were not.
One of the things that is different about “Mudslingers” is that it contains no footnotes, no endnotes and no citations, making it difficult to tell how sources listed in the back of the book are worked into the books’ pages. Another challenge is that the book is part autobiography, part history, blurring the lines of Sheehy’s life with those of the others he’s profiling.
For example, the first direct quotation of any length is found on Page 25, and is made by John Gould, a chief executive of an air tanker company that flies DC-10s. However, it is unclear by the citation or the source list whether the interview was conducted by Sheehy himself as a researcher, or taken from some other work. The same thing happens about 10 pages later at the next quotation with a man named Jason Robinson.
But, those are not the passages of greater concern that raise questions of plagiarism.
Plagiarism usually occurs when a source takes another’s work and presents it as his own without attribution or citation. Correct attribution and citation usually involves endnotes, footnotes, or quotations that let readers know where the material is coming from, and crediting the original authors for their first-hand work.
The Daily Montanan found four instances where Sheehy’s work is nearly verbatim, if not identical, to an older known source, but is presented as his original work. The Daily Montanan also checked that there was not quotation marks or other annotation that would suggest Sheehy was trying to communicate to readers sourced material.
Even before Sheehy’s book was published in December 2023, it had already drawn scrutiny. An Aug. 10, 2023, story by Bryan Metzger of “Business Insider” summarized the challenge in the headline of his story: “GOP Senate candidate plans to steer book sale money to a group that lobbies for his industry, teeing up potential conflict of interest.”
It details that Sheehy set up a lobbying and industry group in Washington,D.C., United Aerial Firefighters, where the proceeds of the book sales have gone. The Daily Montanan has asked about those proceeds, but has not received a response from the publisher. The lobbyist for the UAF is the same one used by Sheehy’s company, according to the Business Insider article.
The Business Insider article summarizes just a few of the conflicts-of-interest that Sheehy’s campaign has had to face, including self-dealing: “If Sheehy’s campaign chooses to promote the book when it’s released, that would mean using campaign resources to raise money for a lobbying organization that benefits Sheehy’s bottom line.”
Paul Pope, associate professor of political science at Montana State University-Billings, seems perfectly positioned for a case just like this.
“If he did what he’s accused of doing here at a university, he’d fail,” Pope said, referring to Sheehy.
In Sheehy’s “Mudslingers” case, it seems clear to Pope.
“One section? Maybe,” Pope said. “Four? That’s a pattern.”
He said that regardless of the number of words, paragraphs or passages, the reason for students as well as professionals is often the same.
“They think they’ll get away with it,” Pope said. “But plagiarism is lying. It’s just an untrustworthy behavior. And, we generally don’t trust liars.”
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