Sheehy Hammered With Bad Headlines as Questions Swirl Around His Lies and Inconsistencies

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, April 15, 2024

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rehm@mtdems.org

From lies about his “rural Minnesota” upbringing, to lies about his “bootstrapped” business and playing “cowboy”, to remaining questions about his gunshot wound and military record, Sheehy’s inconsistencies are stacking up
 

Helena, MT – The bad headlines are stacking up as questions continue to swirlaround Tim Sheehy and the lies he has told Montanans about who he is. 

Sheehy has still not released medical records to clear up questions about a gunshot wound he admitted to lying about, and local press are highlighting inconsistencies about  how he has described his military record. 

Now, new reporting from Daily Beast shows that Sheehy lied about growing up in “rural Minnesota” – when he actually grew up in a multimillion-dollar lakehouse in Shoreview, 15 minutes from Minneapolis and his elite private school in the heart of St. Paul. 

These reports follow earlier revelations about Sheehy’s dishonesty:  

• Vanity Fair revealed that Sheehy has been exaggerating his ranching credentials on the campaign trail, leading Montana ranchers to describe him as a “wannabe cowboy.”

• A previous report from the Daily Beast showed that Sheehy lied about his business record, claiming he “bootstrapped” his company “from scratch”  while omitting that he benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars from his family.  

See the latest stories for yourself: 

Daily Beast: GOP Star Recruit Brags About ‘Rural’ Upbringing. He Grew Up 15 Minutes From the City.
By Riley Rogerson 
April 12, 2024

• Since launching his campaign to unseat vulnerable Sen. Jon Tester (D) last year, Sheehy has described his “rural” childhood on multiple occasions—at a fundraiser for Montana rodeo, in multiple podcast and radio hits, as well as in an interview with Western Ag Reporter.

• The truth, however, is that Sheehy’s home turf is quintessential Minnesota suburbia—a place where pavement dominates pasture.

• The Republican candidate grew up in a multimillion dollar lake house in Shoreview, Minnesota, a quiet Twin Cities suburb just north of St. Paul with a population of roughly 27,000.

• The property sits just three miles from a Trader Joe’s market—much closer than the nearest Fleet Farm, a fishing, hunting, and farm supply store popular in the state.

• And Sheehy was educated 16 miles away at St. Paul Academy, one of the Twin Cities’ most elite private high schools, which counts the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald as an alumnus.

NonStop Local: Breaking down the Sheehy campaign response to recent press coverage
By Bradley Warren and Mike Dennison
April 14, 2024

• Warren: “The big topic of the week has been Tim Sheehy. It feels like it's been, as an outsider looking in, a 1-2 punch for that campaign.”

• Dennison: “My takeaway after reading both of these stories was thinking, 'You know, how much do we really know about this guy?'He really hasn't sat down at length to talk to any Montana experienced political reporters and have them ask normal questions like, you know - 'Where did you grow up?' 'How did you come to Montana?' 'Tell me about your business. How did you develop that?' 'What about your military record?'”

• Dennison: “Very normal questions that reporters ask of new candidates, and I don't think that he's really subjected himself to that sort of questioning.”

• Dennison: “Personally, I don't think it's a good strategy because the reporters I know in Montana - I mean, they're not out to get Tim Sheehy. They're not out to get Republicans. They just want to ask them the normal questions reporters ask the candidates.”

• Dennison: “And like, they said that the Washington Post story was... I think they said liberal misinformation or liberal media misinformation. That story was mostly quoting Sheehy on what he said and what he did.”

Montana Free Press: How the right wing responded to Tim Sheehy’s bullet wound story
By Arren Kimbel-Sannit
April 12, 2024

• The story he told the Post is at least inconsistent with Sheehy’s other public statements regarding his war wounds.

• He told the Post he wasn’t sure if his injury was the result of  friendly fire or not, but in his 2023 book, “Mudslingers,” he wrote that he was hit by a “friendly ricochet bullet.”

• On the campaign trail, the Post reported, Sheehy has described being shot multiple times during the course of his service. The campaign later told the Post he was “shot” three times but wounded by a bullet only once — on the other two occasions, the campaign said, bullets glanced off of his body armor and his radio. 

Montana Public Radio: Campaign Beat: Did Sheehy shoot himself in the foot?
By Corin Cates-Carney, Rob Saldin, Holly Michels
April 12, 2024

• “These stories, and particularly the gunshot, are notable because they go to the core of who Sheehy is and how he's presenting himself to voters. He's made his military service and his success as a businessman absolutely central to what his campaign's about. And to the extent those things are discredited, that's a potentially existential problem for Sheehy's campaign.”

• “The gunshot story from the Post, a lot of pieces of it don't make sense. And there are so many threads to pull on, and each little detail of the story, to my eye, just raises more questions.”

• “But ultimately, Corin, the thing that's most baffling about this, and the thing I keep coming back to, is that the truth is out there on this. It really shouldn't be hard to get to the bottom of this.

• “And that's because for all the little details and all the inconsistencies and oddities, you can kind of set those aside and you're left with a situation that's really rather simple. And that is that there is a big difference between a slip and fall on the hiking trail and a gunshot wound.”

• “Certainly, trained medical professionals would be able to tell the difference. The report from the Kalispell hospital really should be able to resolve this definitively. But of course, that only raises the question of why Sheehy doesn't just release that report and be done with this thing.”

NonStop Local: Tim Sheehy continues to campaign in face of recent press coverage
By Bradley Warren 
April 13, 2024

• U.S. Senate Republican candidate Tim Sheehy coming under scrutiny, and a number of articles that were released in the last week looking into not only his past, but his company.

• [Sheehy] objected to the fact that the media outlet reached out to him asking for clarification.

• Now, to the flip to this, this is a contested primary, and we did reach out to Brad Johnson, the other Republican in the race. And he sent us this statement saying, that, in fact: “This is what you get when an unknown, untested, and unvetted candidate is running.”

Q2: Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy claims he lied to a park ranger about how he received a bullet wound
April 10, 2024

• In a new Washington Post report, Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy claims he lied to a park ranger about how he received a bullet wound.

• The ranger says Sheehy showed him the weapon and recalls the firearm was in a holster in Sheehy’s vehicle – fully loaded except for one missing bullet.

• Vote Vets, a progressive veterans group, says they are “deeply troubled that a fellow veteran may have misrepresented aspects of their service while trying to win a political campaign.”

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