EXCLUSIVE: The Washington Post is facing backlash after the media outlet cited three experts to cast doubt on the validity of a gunshot wound suffered in Afghanistan by a leading Republican Senate candidate, but omitted the trio’s ties to the Democratic Party.
Former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, who is running to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, went to the emergency room after a reported fall in Montana’s Glacier National Park in 2015. Sheehy was asked about a bullet found on his arm during the visit and told a National Park ranger that he had accidentally shot himself with a Colt .45 revolver, but Sheehy recently revealed that he actually suffered the injury while serving in Afghanistan in 2012.
Sheehy told the Washington Post that he never reported it to his superiors to avoid an investigation, and he told the outlet he wasn’t sure where the bullet came from. He said he did not report the incident in an effort to protect his former platoon mates.
The Post, which began the report by stating that Sheehy left the bullet in his arm “as proof of his toughness,” spoke to several people who cast doubt on Sheehy’s story. Public records reviewed by Fox News Digital reveal that these same individuals combined have donated thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party.
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Sheehy served in Iraq, Afghanistan, South America and the Pacific region, and received the Bronze Star for Valor for Heroism in Combat and the Purple Heart Medal. (Tim Sheehy for Senate)
Looking at an X-ray of the wound, which Sheehy provided to the Post, Joseph V. Sakran, a Johns Hopkins trauma surgeon and longtime Democratic donor, raised questions about the Republican Senate candidate’s history. Sakran told the Post that Sheehy’s wound “probably represents a bullet, but it is not possible to say what type of weapon it came from or the age of the wound.”
Sakran previously worked as a Democratic staffer, serving as a health policy fellow for Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. Documents filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reveal that the doctor has a long history of contributing to the campaigns of Democratic candidates throughout the polls, including donating at least $21,000 to groups such as the Hillary Clinton Victory Fund. , Hillary for America, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Biden for president.
Sakran website calls him a “nationally recognized coalition-building activist” and said his “activism first achieved national recognition when he founded Doctors for Hillary.”
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Sakran has also made public comments against former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Sheehy for the Montana Senate in 2024. Sakran wrote on January 6, 2021 that the former Republican president “left an undeniably dark stain on American history.” Additionally, White House visitor records reveal that Sakran has made at least four visits to the Biden White House.
“We are not surprised that the Washington Post decided to subpoena well-known Democrats for their defamatory article against decorated combat veteran Tim Sheehy,” a spokesperson for Montana-based Sheehy told Fox News Digital in a statement. “These are the same people who fueled the Democrats’ Russia hoax and pretend every day that President Biden is mentally fit and our border is not in crisis. Tim Sheehy will defeat Jon Tester this November and join President Trump , so we can drain the swamp forever.”
Former President Donald Trump endorsed Tim Sheehy for Montana Senate in 2024. (Sheehy for Senate)
The outlet spoke to another expert, former Air Force attorney Rachel VanLandingham, who questioned Sheehy’s hesitation in reporting the incident. She said she believes it is “very unlikely that a possible rebound injury from years ago would force naval investigators to open any type of investigation based on a park ranger’s report.”
VanLandingham has made multiple donations to ActBlue and Hillary for America, records show. Additionally, she has referred to Trump as a “poster child for terrorist recruiting.”
VanLandingham, who said she is currently a registered Democrat but finds “both parties extremely problematic,” told Fox News Digital in an email that her political views never came up in conversation while she contributed to the article.
“My political views did not, and never have, come up in the conversation with this journalist during this particular interview, or any other – again, my experience is considered neutral, I hope, and I want to keep it that way.” VanLandingham said. “I have publicly criticized President Biden and certainly Secretary of Defense Austin in the past, and I would [sic] again if my professional judgment considers it justified.”
She also added that she was appointed by President Trump’s last Secretary of Defense to the Military Justice Review Panel as evidence that she is known as “an impartial and forthright military law expert who is not afraid to speak her mind.”
Despite claiming that she is “neutral” and that her “analyses are not based on politics, but on law and facts,” a Fox News Digital review found several examples of VanLandingham attacking Trump and his supporters.
“Trump is an example of recruiting terrorists. Tx for making America less safe and with less real power!” she wrote in 2017.
In 2020, VanLandingham also wrote that “Trump’s call to label Antifa ‘domestic terrorists’ is dangerous.”
“Yes, welcome to the party. I felt that way when the racist bully Trump and his domestic and foreign enablers won the electoral college in 2016, and that way during the glorification of our deeply racist nation in Charlottesville the following year. Yesterday was not a Surprise. Pathetic, Yes” she wrote on January 7, 2021, the day after the January 6 Capitol riot.
After contributing to the Post report, VanLandingham described Sheehy as a “deeply flawed hero whose fitness for office is highly questionable,” in an April 6 post on Vice President’s decision to choose Kamala Harris as his running mate was an “excellent” decision.
Vanlandingham shared a 2021 USA Today op-ed by David Rothkopf, a strong Biden supporter who has called Trump a “bigger” threat to the United States than Al Qaeda. He opinion article was titled“Trump and his supporters are dangerous enemies of American democracy.”
The Post also spoke to the director of the Center for a New American Security’s Military, Veterans and Society program, Katherine Kuzminski, who said she “believed it was highly unlikely that a civilian hospital would inform the Navy about a long-ago gunshot wound.” years”. or that someone feared that such a report would lead to an investigation,” according to the report.
Kuzminski, who took a photo with Biden and the first lady in 2023 and made multiple visits to the Biden White House, wrote in a 2016 post on X that Trump is “not a Republican.”
He also said it was “unfair” for Republicans to criticize the military’s focus on diversity, telling Congress in May 2023 that “if what we fear is that Vladimir Putin will think poorly of our military readiness because we enable pronouns, “All we have to do is look at the results on the battlefield that the Russian army is facing right now.”
The Washington Post, Sakran, Kuzminski, Tester’s campaign, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Navy did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
The entrance to the Washington Post corporate building in Washington DC (ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images)
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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., criticized the article as a “politically motivated smear.”
“A ridiculous, politically motivated smear,” Cotton wrote in a post on
