Recent reporting exposed Tim Sheehy for plagiarizing 4 sections of his book “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting.” This story follows previous reporting that highlighted the lies he told about how he got his gunshot wound and the shady business dealings surrounding his collapsing company.
While this is just the latest example of Shady Sheehy’s “untrustworthy behavior”, this is the second plagiarism scandal in a Montana U.S. Senate race. In 2014, candidate John Walsh dropped out of the Montana Senate race after reports showed he plagiarized parts of his thesis. You may remember, because it received wall-to-wall local and national media coverage.
“In this episode of Tim Sheehy versus the truth, the truth won again.” said End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller. “From day one, Tim Sheehy hasn’t been truthful on the campaign trail, and to see all the plagiarized sections of his book only confirms just how untrustworthy he is. In November, voters will show Tim Sheehy that lying isn’t the way to secure a seat in the Senate.”
Daily Montanan: Problematic prose: Senate candidate Sheehy’s book appears to contain four plagiarized portions
Darrell Ehrlick
09/20/24
Key sections:
- The Republican who is challenging incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester has built that backstory: First he was a U.S. Navy SEAL, combat wounded, and then a businessman who even wrote a book on aerial firefighting. That book was widely seen as a prelude or introduction of Sheehy as a public figure.
- The book, “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” was also subtitled, “An American Origins Story.”
- But, the book which has helped solidify his place as a candidate and authority on aerial firefighting seems to have at least four different passages that were plagiarized — sourced, but not credited in the book, according to an investigation by the Daily Montanan.
- The Daily Montanan put Sheehy’s book through commercially available software that scans texts against a massive store of other published and online sources to compare passages.
- The Daily Montanan reached out to the Sheehy campaign for further explanation, but heard nothing back from it.
- It is not the first time the details of Sheehy’s life before politics have come under scrutiny for their truthfulness. Sheehy’s past, including a gunshot wound that may have been sustained in Glacier National Park, claims of parachute training over Glacier, and his business dealings including his aerial firefighting company, Bridger Aerospace, have come under fire. It’s also not the first time that Sheehy has remained silent when confronted with difficult questions. Sheehy has not openly commented or explained a recording of him in which he repeated on different occasions disparaging comments about Native Americans drinking, even after being called upon by Montana’s tribal leaders to disavow, apologize or explain the comments.
- However, as other media outlets have reported, including Business Insider, it appears that the proceeds of the book go back to an aerial firefighting lobbying company which Sheehy himself founded, which in turn, works on behalf of his own company, raising questions about whether the money is really being funneled right back to him.
- The Daily Montanan found four instances where Sheehy’s work is nearly verbatim, if not identical, to an older known source, but is presented as his original work. The Daily Montanan also checked that there was not quotation marks or other annotation that would suggest Sheehy was trying to communicate to readers sourced material.
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