WASHINGTON: Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, the FBI confirmed on Friday that it was indeed a bullet that hit the former president's ear, trying to sort out conflicting accounts of what caused the former president's injuries after a gunman opened fire at a meeting in Pennsylvania.
“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject's rifle,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI statement marked the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump's injuries and followed equivocal comments earlier this week from Director Christopher Wray who appeared to doubt whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.
The comment sparked outrage from Trump and his allies and further fueled conspiracy theories that have run rampant on both sides of the political aisle amid a lack of information since the July 13 attack.
So far, federal law enforcement agents involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, have repeatedly refused to provide information about what caused Trump's injuries. Trump's campaign has also declined to release medical records from the hospital where he was first treated or to make the doctors there available for questions.
Updates have instead come either from Trump himself or from Trump's former White House physician, Ronny Jackson, a staunch ally who now represents Texas in Congress. Although Jackson has treated Trump since the night of the attack, he has come under considerable scrutiny and is not Trump's primary care physician.
The FBI's apparent reluctance to immediately buy into the former president's version of events — along with the anger he and some supporters have directed at the agency in the aftermath of the shooting — has also fueled fresh tension between the Republican nominee and the nation's top federal law enforcement agency . , which he was soon able to exercise control over again.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly accused federal law enforcement of being armed against him.
Questions about the extent and nature of Trump's wounds began immediately after the attack, as his campaign and law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about his condition or the treatment he received after Trump narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt by a gunman with a high- powered rifle.
These questions have persisted despite images showing the trail of a projectile speeding past Trump's head, photographs showing Trump's teleprompter glass intact after the shooting, and the account Trump himself gave in a Truth Social post within hours of the shooting, saying he had been ” shot”. with a bullet piercing the upper part of my right ear.”
“I immediately knew something was wrong by hearing a whooshing sound, gunshots and immediately felt the bullet rip through my skin,” he wrote.
Days later, in a speech accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump described the horrific scene in detail, while wearing a large, white gauze bandage over his right ear.
“I heard a loud whooshing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard, in my right ear. I said to myself, 'Wow, what was that? It could just be a bullet,'” he said.
“If I hadn't moved my head at the very last moment,” Trump said, “the assassin's bullet would have hit its mark perfectly, and I wouldn't be here tonight.”
But the first medical account of Trump's condition didn't come until a full week after the shooting, when Jackson released his first letter Saturday night. In that letter, he said the bullet that struck Trump had “produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear.” He also revealed that Trump had received a CT scan at the hospital.
But federal law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, had declined to confirm that account. And Wray's testimony apparently gave conflicting answers on the matter.
“There's a question as to whether it's a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray testified, before appearing to suggest it was indeed a bullet.
“I don't know if that bullet, in addition to causing the bite, could have landed anywhere else,” he said.
The following day, the FBI sought to clarify the matter with a statement confirming that the shooting was an “attempted assassination of former President Trump that resulted in his injury, as well as the death of a heroic father and the injuries of several other victims.” The FBI also said Thursday that its Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to examine bullet fragments and other evidence from the scene.
Jackson, who has treated the former president since the night of the July 13 shooting, told The Associated Press on Thursday that any suggestion that Trump's ear was bloodied by anything other than a bullet was reckless.
“It was a gunshot wound,” Jackson said. “You can't make statements like that. It leads to all these conspiracy theories.”
In his letter Friday, Jackson insisted that “there is absolutely no evidence” that Trump was hit by anything other than a bullet and said it was “wrong and inappropriate to suggest otherwise.”
He wrote that at Butler Memorial Hospital, where the GOP nominee was rushed after the shooting, he was evaluated and treated for a “gunshot wound to the right ear.”
“Having served as an emergency medicine physician for over 20 years in the US Navy, including as a combat medic on the battlefield in Iraq,” he wrote, “I have treated many gunshot wounds in my career. Based on my direct observations of the injury, my relevant clinical background and my considerable experience in evaluating and treating patients with similar wounds, I fully agree with the initial assessment and treatment provided by the physicians and nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital on the day of the shooting.”
The FBI declined to comment on the Jackson letters.
Asked whether the campaign would release those hospital records or allow the doctors who treated him there to speak, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung criticized the media for asking.
“The media has no shame in engaging in vile conspiracy theories,” he said. “Facts are facts, and to question a heinous attempted murder that ultimately cost one life and injured two others is beyond the pale.”
In emails last week, he told the AP that “medical readings” had already been provided.
“It's sad that some people still don't believe that a shooting happened,” Cheung said, “even after one person was killed and others were injured.”
Anyone who believes in the conspiracies, he added, “is either mentally deficient or is deliberately peddling falsehoods for political reasons.”
Late. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., a close Trump ally, also urged Wray to correct his testimony in a letter Friday to the FBI director, saying the fact that Trump had been hit by a bullet “was made clear in briefings that my office received and should not be a point of contention.”
“As director of the FBI, you should not create confusion about matters like this, as it further undermines the agency's credibility with millions of Americans,” he wrote.
Trump also lashed out at Wray in a post on his Truth Social network, saying it was “No wonder the once historic FBI has lost America's trust!”
“No, unfortunately it was a bullet that hit my ear and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no splinter,” he wrote.
On Friday, he called Wray's comments “so damaging to the great people who work at the FBI.”
Jackson has faced significant scrutiny over the years.
After administering a physical to Trump in 2018, he drew headlines for suggesting that “if he had a healthier diet for the last 20 years, he could live to be 200 years old.”
He is reportedly being demoted by the Navy after the Defense Department's inspector general released a scathing report into his conduct as a top White House physician that found Jackson had made “sexual and derogatory” comments about a female subordinate and taken prescription sleep medication that drew concern from colleagues about his ability to provide proper medical care.
Trump appointed Wray in 2017 to replace the fired James Comey as director of the FBI. But the then-president quickly buzzed about his hiring as the agency continued its investigation into Russian election meddling.
Trump openly flirted with the idea of firing Wray as his term neared its end, and he lashed out again after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to recover boxes of classified documents from his presidency.
