Tim Sheehy, a charismatic former Navy SEAL who is the Republican candidate in a U.S. Senate race in Montana that could determine control of the chamber, has cited a gunshot wound he received in combat that he said left a bullet in his right arm as evidence of his toughness.

“I got thick skin — though it’s not thick enough. I have a bullet stuck in this arm still from Afghanistan,” Sheehy said in a video of a December campaign event posted on social media, pointing to his right forearm.

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Guess what? In 2015 while in a public parking lot in Glacier National Park in Montana, Sheehy was injured and taken to a hospital emergency room. He told a park ranger that his Colt .45 revolver fell and discharged, injuring his right arm.

Asked this week about the citation, which has not been previously reported, Sheehy told The Washington Post that the statement he gave the ranger was a lie. He said he made up the story about the gun going off to protect himself and his former platoonmates from facing a potential military investigation into an old bullet wound that he said he got in Afghanistan in 2012. He said he did not know for certain whether the wound was the result of friendly fire or from enemy ammunition, and said he never reported the incident to his superiors.

Sheehy said he did not shoot himself in the park in 2015, but rather fell and hurt himself on a hike, necessitating a trip to an emergency room, where he said he told hospital staff he had a bullet in his arm, triggering his interview with the ranger.

“I guess the only thing I’m guilty of is admitting to doing something I never did,” Sheehy said of paying a $525 fine for illegally discharging his weapon in the national park; he now says the gun never went off in the park.
Is that the dumbest lie ever? Or is it so unlikely that it must be true?