EVERETT HERALD: Candidate’s father alleges son lied, including about military service

UPDATE: The Whidbey News-Times and South Whidbey Record, which are corporate siblings of the Everett Hearld, printed this story in their Sat., Nov. 5, 2022 issues.

Jacqueline Allison reports in the Everett Herald:

Brett Shavers, father of Clyde Shavers, sent a scathing three-page letter to his son’s opponent, asserting his son falsely claimed in campaign materials he served as a nuclear submarine officer in the Navy for eight years.

“Clyde was never a submarine officer, not even for a day,” Brett Shavers wrote.

They Said It

Clyde Shavers’ website previously stated “for more than 8 years, he served as a nuclear submarine officer and public affairs officer with tours in the Middle East and Southeast Asia,” according to an internet archive of the website from Feb. 11.

The statement has since been scrubbed from the website. Today, the website says “he was commissioned into the nuclear submarine community and later transitioned as a public affairs officer in 2015.”

In an Aug. 23 interview with the Herald Editorial Board, Shavers said he was a nuclear submarine officer “for a couple of years.”

But in an email on Tuesday, the candidate said “I have never said that I deployed on a submarine, but only that I was commissioned as a nuclear submarine officer.”

“This is the kind of politics that’s tearing apart families and communities, and my campaign is about healing and moving forward,” [Shavers] said of his father’s letter.

[Ed. Note: The Everett Herald endorsed Shavers in this campaign on Sep. 20; after reviewing what they call “misrepresentations” by Shavers regarding his military service and his claim of being an attorney (despite not having passed the bar in Washington state], they have rescinded this endorsement.