Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL running for the Senate in Montana, has said he was discharged from the military for medical reasons because of injuries he sustained on duty, but his discharge paperwork tells a different story.
The heavily redacted, two-page document obtained by NBC News indicates that Sheehy voluntarily resigned his commission and does not list any medical condition that forced him out of uniform, according to a review of the document and a current and former U.S. official familiar with the details of his separation.
Sheehy said as much in his memoir last year, noting that he did develop a health issue but it was not the reason he left the Navy.
In the book, “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” Sheehy wrote that he suffered a bad case of decompression sickness, commonly known as the bends, while he was riding in a mini-submarine during a training exercise in Hawaii. It caused a "tiny hole in my heart.”
“There would be a period of recovery and evaluation, I was told, before I could return to active duty,” he wrote.
He ultimately decided to resign instead. “If I couldn’t be out in the field, leading from the front, then it was time to consider doing something else,” he wrote. “I had put in my time; I was free to go if that was what I wanted.”
In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for the Sheehy campaign offered a more nuanced explanation.
“Tim Sheehy was honorably discharged from the Navy after being declared medically unfit to continue to serve as a Navy SEAL in 2014,” the spokesperson said. “After Tim left active duty in 2014, he was then in the Navy Individual Ready Reserve (IRR)” — a section of the Navy Reserve — “until his honorable discharge in 2019.”
The spokesperson did not directly address why Sheehy’s discharge paperwork contradicts his claims that he was discharged for medical reasons.
A decorated military career
What’s beyond dispute is that Sheehy had a decorated military career. He was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in battle in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, as well as a Bronze Star for valor.
Sheehy’s apparently false claims of being medically discharged add to the number of statements he has made about his military record that have been questioned. He was already facing scrutiny for his claim that he was shot in Afghanistan, which has been contradicted by a National Park Service ranger who has told reporters that Sheehy shot himself in an accident at Glacier National Park in 2015.
Sheehy’s showdown with Democratic incumbent Jon Tester is one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country. Sheehy, a Republican who operates an aerial firefighting company, is leading Tester in the polls. With the Democrats holding a razor-thin majority, the outcome could determine which party controls the Senate.
Sheehy has made his military service a core part of his campaign. In interviews with conservative podcast hosts, he has said he was forced out of the military because of injury.
"So finally, they said, ‘Hey, you’re at the end of the road, you know, you’ve got shrapnel in you, you’ve got a bullet in you, you’ve had a head injury, you know, you’re out of here,'" Sheehy said on the “First Class Fatherhood” podcast in November.
In March, he said on “The Victor Davis Hanson Show” podcast that he served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and “got wounded and injured a handful of times."
“Eventually, I was medically discharged from the military,” he added.
Sheehy also submitted a résumé to the Montana Legislature in 2021 that claims he was “medically separated from active duty due to wounds received in Afghanistan.”
He graduated from the Naval Academy in 2008 and left the military six years later after fulfilling his mandatory service requirement, records show.
Sheehy earned a Bronze Star for his actions on April 9, 2012, when his patrol came under fire in the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan. After a member of his unit was wounded, Sheehy ran 50 meters through enemy fire and shielded the service member from incoming fire, according to the Navy citation. As the firefight continued, Sheehy helped set up a landing area for the medevac helicopter and carried the wounded man 200 meters for evacuation.
Sheehy received the Purple Heart for an incident on April 25, 2012. The circumstances are unclear. His campaign did not release the citation, which would provide a narrative of what happened, and instead referred NBC News to a local news article published on the day of the 2015 award ceremony. The article in the Independent Record of Helena says he was knocked unconscious by an improvised explosive device.
Sheehy has remained ahead of Tester in the polls despite questions about how and where he sustained a gunshot wound.
Sheehy has recounted in his book and said on the campaign trail that he was shot in the right arm during a battle in Afghanistan in the spring of 2012. But The Washington Post and The New York Times have reported that Sheehy told a National Park Service ranger that he sustained a bullet wound to his arm in 2015 when his Colt .45 fell and discharged in a parking lot at Glacier National Park in Montana.
Sheehy was cited for the incident by the ranger and fined over $500 for illegally discharging a weapon in a national park. He told the Post that he lied to the ranger to protect himself and his fellow SEALs from a possible investigation related to the alleged incident in Afghanistan.
The spokesperson for the Sheehy campaign said that “the bullet in Tim’s arm was a result of his service in Afghanistan.”
“Tim never reported it because he didn’t want to trigger an investigation of his team, be pulled from the battlefield, and see a fellow teammate be punished,” the spokesperson said. “It was always about protecting a fellow team member of his unit he thought could have been responsible due to friendly fire ricochet in the heat of an engagement with the enemy.”
