FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during marathon testimony on Wednesday that investigators still don’t know whether the former president donald trump was grazed by a bullet or shrapnel during his assassination attempt.
Twice during the hours-long session, Wray told lawmakers that the FBI was still working to determine what exactly hit the former president’s right ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “My understanding is that either [a bullet] or some shrapnel hit his ear,” Wray told Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.).
Later during the hearing, Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked Wray if investigators knew where all eight bullets fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks ended up after the shooting.
“There’s some question as to whether or not it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear, so it’s conceivable, as I sit here now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to grazing him, could have also landed somewhere else,” he testified. Wray.
Jordan did not answer any questions about the shrapnel.
Trump says he ‘took a bullet for democracy’ in campaign speech in Michigan
Speaking at the Republican National Convention just days after the assassination attempt, Trump said the bullet “came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life.”
“I heard a loud buzzing noise and felt something hit me very hard in my right ear,” the former president described the scene.
Trump’s former White House doctor, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), later said on a conservative talk show that he examined the wound in the days immediately after the shooting. “This [the bullet] it was far enough away from his head that there was no blunt effect from the bullet, and it only took off the top of his ear.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray: “With regard to former President Trump, there are questions about whether or not it was a bullet or shrapnel that struck his ear.” pic.twitter.com/3TNjLZp4S1
– Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 25, 2024
As the investigation into the assassination attempt continues, Wray offered the committee some new insights – including the revelation that Crooks I tried searching how far the shooter was from former President John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1963.
Trump responded with a post on Social Truth while the hearing was still going on, calling for Wray’s resignation – but not for anything he said about the assassination attempt. Instead, Trump criticized the FBI director for claiming that he found his interactions with President Biden “dull and normal.”
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