Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy struggled in a new interview to give a clear explanation of the circumstances surrounding a 2015 incident at a national park that led to his treatment for a gunshot wound and a fine.

In the interview with radio host and former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, which went live Thursday, Sheehy left Kelly confused and she warned him that Montana voters were unclear about what happened. pass. “I just want to give you a chance to explain, because that’s their closing message. It’s all about this incident: voters are confused. … It’s so confusing,” she told him.

Controversy looms over a crucial Senate race in Montana that both parties view as key to securing a majority in the final days of a hotly contested election.

The questions stem from different accounts Sheehy gave about a bullet lodged in his right arm.

All accounts agree that, as first reported According to the Washington Post this spring, Sheehy went to the hospital after his gun went off in Glacier National Park in 2015 (firing a gun is illegal in a national park).

Sheehy was approached by a ranger that day who was responding to a call about a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the ranger wrote in a citation at the time and I have since said it publicly. The ranger said Sheehy told him he accidentally shot himself in the arm, and Sheehy then went to the hospital for treatment.

Sheehy now says he was never hit by gunfire that day in 2015. Instead, he says, he was injured in a fall while hiking and sought to to seek treatment for a bullet already in the arm that he received in Afghanistan while he was stationed. a Navy SEAL, a story he told on the campaign trail.

Sheehy said he sought treatment the day of the hike in Glacier National Park because he feared the bullet, which was still in his arm, had become dislodged. Importantly, he said he did not report being injured in combat, either during his service or after his injury at Glacier, because it was the result of a friendly fire incident and he did not want his unit underwent a lengthy investigation into what amounted to a small injury. , a claim he repeated in the interview with Kelly.

He received a $525 ticket for going off a gun in Glacier National Park and paid it, he told The Post in April, to avoid an investigation into his unit.

Kelly pressed Sheehy this week about any medical records that would help confirm his account of what happened; Sheehy responded that these records do not exist.

“There’s no — I mean, that’s the point,” Sheehy said. “You go there, you check it out, and you leave. There is no complete medical record for all of this.

Kelly responded: “It’s so confusing. »

Kelly directly asked Sheehy about the injury that occurred in the park: “To be clear, did you shoot yourself in the arm?

“No, that was never the allegation that – the fact is, you know, it was a friendly fire ricochet that was not reported at the time,” said Sheehy.

Democrats, who are fighting to help Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mt., win an unexpected fourth term in deep-red Montana, accused Sheehy of not being honest about either incident and asked him to disclose medical and military records. to confirm his story. They also said he had to lie about his injury, either to his military command while serving or to park rangers and local law enforcement following the Glacier National Park incident.

In the conversation with Kelly, which is one of the few media interviews Sheehy has given as a candidate, Kelly asked the candidate if he was injured during his hike in the park.

“Yes, I fell and hurt my arm while we were hiking,” he said. “That’s why I went because I could feel the ball dislodging when I, when I was falling and falling on my arm, you could feel the ball dislodging. And then I went to the emergency room to say, hey, look, you know, I’m bleeding internally here. I injured my arm. Can you take a look at this? Make sure nothing bad happens here.

A spokesperson for Sheehy called questions about the gunshot wound “an attempt to destroy a veteran’s record.”

“The shot in Tim’s arm was a result of his service in Afghanistan,” Sheehy’s spokesperson said. “Tim never reported it because he didn’t want to trigger an investigation into his team, be removed from the battlefield, and see his teammate punished. It was always a matter of protecting a member of his unit team that he believed may have been responsible due to ricocheting friendly fire in the heat of an engagement with the enemy.

Republicans view the Sheehy race as one of the biggest recovery opportunities in a cycle where the Senate seat map heading into the election favors their party. The Republican challenger has led Tester in most public polls, although Democrats insist the race is not over. Former President Donald Trump is expected to win the state easily.

During the interview with Kelly, Sheehy described the complexity of fighting in Afghanistan with “the Afghan forces embedded on our side.”

“We call these green-on-blue incidents, which were actually very, very common, where Afghans ended up intentionally or unintentionally shooting at friendly forces,” he said.

Sheehy had initially said the friendly fire incident came from a fellow SEAL, writing in his 2023 book “Mudslingers” that he did not report the shooting in Afghanistan “because I didn’t want to get fired home and lose my team, and I didn’t want the teammate who fired that shot, a true stud who had a successful career as a SEAL, to be punished – officially or by reputation – by an accident that was in no way his fault.

He wrote in the same book that he was discharged from the army for medical reasons, but as NBC News reported last monthexit documents indicate he resigned voluntarily and do not mention any health issues that forced him to leave.