WASHINGTON – Almost two weeks later Donald Trump’s almost assassinationThe FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president’s ear, moving to clarify conflicting reports about what caused the former president’s injuries after a gunman opened fire at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“What struck former President Trump’s ear was a bullet, either whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased’s rifle,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI’s one-sentence statement marked the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump’s injuries and followed ambiguous comments earlier in the week from director Christopher Wray this seemed to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.
The comment provoked fury from Trump and his allies and further fueled conspiracy theories that have flourished on both sides of the political aisle amid a dearth of information following the July 13 attack.
So far, federal agents involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, have refused to provide information about what caused Trump’s injuries. Trump’s campaign also refused to release medical records from the hospital where he was first treated or make doctors available for questions.
Instead, the updates came from Trump himself or Trump’s former White House doctor, Ronnie Jackson, a loyal ally who now represents Texas in Congress. Although Jackson has been treating Trump since the night of the attack, he is under considerable scrutiny and is not Trump’s primary care doctor.
The FBI’s apparent reluctance to immediately confirm the former president’s version of events has also increased tension between the Republican candidate and the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency, over which he may soon once again exercise control. Trump and his supporters have for years accused federal authorities of using weapons against him, something Wray has always denied.
Speaking at an event on Friday in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump drew boos from the crowd as he described the suggestion that he may have been hit by glass or shrapnel rather than a bullet.
“Did you see the FBI apologize today?” he asked. “It never ends with these people… We accept their apology.”
Trump appeared on Friday for the first time without a bandage on his right ear. Photographs and videos showed no signs of continued bleeding and no distinct holes or cuts.
Questions about the extent and nature of Trump’s injury 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 man armed with a high-powered rifle.
These questions have persisted despite photographs showing the trail of a bullet passing through Trump’s head, as well as the glass of Trump’s teleprompter intact after the shooting, and the account that Trump himself gave in a Truth Social post just hours after the shooting. shooting that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the top of my right ear.”
“I immediately knew something was wrong as I heard a buzzing sound, gunshots and immediately felt the bullet tearing through the skin,” he wrote.
Days later, in a nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump recounted the scene in detail while wearing a large gauze bandage over his right ear.
“I heard a loud buzzing sound and felt something hit me very, very hard in my right ear. I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It has to be a bullet,’” he said.
“If I hadn’t moved my head at that last moment,” Trump said, “the assassin’s bullet would have hit home perfectly and I wouldn’t be here tonight.”
But the first medical report of Trump’s condition didn’t come until a week after the shooting, when Jackson released his first letter last Saturday night. In it, he said that the bullet that hit Trump “produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended to the cartilaginous surface of the ear.” He also revealed that Trump had a CT scan at the hospital.
Federal authorities involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, declined to confirm that account. And Wray’s testimony offered seemingly conflicting answers on the matter.
“There are questions about whether or not it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray said, before appearing to suggest it was actually a bullet.
“I don’t know if that bullet, in addition to causing the graze, could also have landed somewhere else,” he said.
On Thursday, the FBI sought to clarify the issue with a statement saying the shooting was an “assassination attempt on former President Trump that resulted in his injuries, as well as the death of a heroic father and the injuries of several other victims ”. The FBI also said Thursday that its gunshot reconstruction team continues to examine bullet fragments and other evidence from the scene.
Jackson, who has been treating 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 from anything other than a bullet was reckless.
“It was a gunshot wound,” Jackson said. “You can’t make statements like that. That leads to all these conspiracy theories.”
In his Friday letter, Jackson insisted there is “absolutely no evidence” that Trump was hit by anything other than a bullet and said it was “wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
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 more than 20 years in the United States Navy, including as a battlefield combat medic in Iraq,” he wrote, “I have treated many gunshot wounds in my career. Based on my direct observations of the injury, my relevant medical history, and my significant experience evaluating and treating patients with similar wounds, I completely agree with the initial evaluation and treatment provided by the physicians and nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital on the day of shooting.”
The FBI declined to comment on Jackson’s 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 is not shy about engaging in disgusting conspiracy theories,” he said. “The facts are the facts, and questioning a heinous assassination attempt that ended up costing one life and injuring two other people is out of bounds.”
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 a shooting happened,” Cheung said, “even after one person was killed and others were injured.”
Anyone who believes the conspiracies, he added, “is either mentally disabled or deliberately peddling falsehoods for political reasons.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close Trump ally, also urged Wray to correct his testimony in a letter Fridaysaying that the fact that Trump was hit by a bullet “was clear from the instructions my office received and should not be a point of contention.”
“As the head of the FBI, you should not create confusion about these matters, as doing so further undermines the agency’s credibility with millions of Americans,” he wrote.
Trump also attacked Wray in a post on his Truth Social network, saying “no wonder the once-famous FBI has lost America’s trust!”
“No, unfortunately it was a bullet that hit my ear, and hit hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” he wrote.
On Friday, he called Wray’s comments “very damaging to the great people who work at the FBI.”
Jackson has encountered significant scrutiny over the years.
After administering a physical exam to Trump in 2018, he made headlines for suggesting that “if he had a healthier diet over the past 20 years, he could live to be 200.”
He was reportedly demoted by the Navy after the Defense Department inspector general released a scathing report on his conduct as a top White House doctor which found that Jackson had made “sexual and derogatory” comments about a female subordinate and taken prescribed sleeping medications, which raised concerns among his colleagues about his ability to provide adequate medical care.
Trump appointed Wray as FBI director in 2017 to replace the fired James Comey. But the then-president quickly bristled at his hiring as the FBI continued to investigate Russian election interference.
Trump openly flirted with the idea of firing Wray as his term came to an end, and struck again after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, estate to recover boxes of confidential documents from his presidency. .
___ Colvin reported from New York.
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