Mother Jones illustration; Chip Somodevilla/Getty

There appears to be a bullet lodged in Tim Sheehy’s right forearm. That is not in dispute. But how and when it got there has become the subject of an ongoing mystery that has dogged the campaign of the former Navy SEAL challenging Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in one of this election cycle’s most high-stakes races.

The question of how Sheehy was shot first came up last spring in a Washington Post exposé by Liz Goodwin who reported that Sheehy had said on the campaign trail he has a “bullet stuck” in his right arm from his time serving in Afghanistan. The problem was that Sheehy had told a National Park Service ranger in 2015 that the bullet wound in his right arm came from him accidentally shooting himself with a Colt .45 revolver while in Glacier National Park.

When confronted with these incompatible stories, Sheehy told the Post that his original story was a lie designed to protect former platoon-mates who may have shot him in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2012. Sheehy said that, in reality, he’d ended up in the emergency room in 2015 after falling on a hike. A park ranger, in this version of the story, was summoned to the hospital because Sheehy told the staff there that he had a bullet in his arm.

Sheey’s account should be easy to substantiate. Medical records would presumably show whether he arrived at the hospital with a fresh bullet wound or an injury sustained from a fall. The medical professionals who treated him could potentially recall what happened. A family member who was with him that day could back up his story. But Sheehy has not released records or made available any witnesses of the 2015 incident who could backup his version of events.

Sheehy, 38, is a first-time candidate who, until recently, ran a wildfire firefighting........

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