Nearly two weeks after Donald
Trump’s near assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was
indeed a bullet that struck the former president’s ear, moving to clear up
conflicting accounts about what caused the former president’s injuries after a
gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.
“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 one-sentence statement from the FBI marked the most definitive law
enforcement account of Trump’s injuries and followed ambiguous
comments earlier in the week from Director Christopher Wray that
appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.
The comment drew fury from Trump and his allies and further stoked
conspiracy theories that have flourished on both sides of the political aisle
amid a dearth of information following the July 13 attack.
Up until now, federal law enforcement agents involved in the
investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, had 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 doctor, Ronny Jackson,
a staunch ally who now represents Texas in Congress. Though Jackson has been
treating 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 vouch for the former
president’s version of events has also raised fresh tension between the
Republican nominee and the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency,
which he could soon exert control over once again. Trump and his supporters
have for years accused federal law enforcement of being weaponized against him,
something Wray has consistently denied.
Speaking at an event later Friday in West Palm Beach Florida, Trump drew
boos from the crowd when he described the suggestion that he may have been
struck by glass or shrapnel instead of a bullet.
“Did you see the FBI today apologized?" he asked. “It just never ends
with these people. ... We accept their apology.”
Trump appeared Friday for the first time without a bandage on his right
ear. Photographs and video showed no sign of continued bleeding, and no
distinct holes or gashes.
Questions about the extent and nature of Trump’s wound began immediately
after the attack, as his campaign and law enforcement officials declined to
answer questions about his condition or the treatment he
received after Trump narrowly escaped death in an attempted assassination by a
gunman with a high-powered rifle.
Those questions have persisted despite photographs showing the trace of a
projectile speeding past Trump’s head as well as Trump’s teleprompter glass
intact after the shooting, and the account Trump himself gave in a Truth Social
post within hours of the shooting that he had been “shot with a bullet that
pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing
sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he
wrote.
Days later, in a speech accepting the nomination 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 whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really
hard, on my right ear. I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a
bullet,’” he said.
“If I had not moved my head at that very last instant,” Trump said, “the
assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and I would not 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 last Saturday evening. In it, 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 Trump had received a
CT scan at the hospital.
Federal law enforcement involved in the investigation, including the FBI
and Secret Service, had declined to confirm that account. And Wray’s testimony
offered apparently conflicting answers on the issue.
“There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that
hit his ear,” Wray said, before he seemed to suggest it was indeed a bullet.
“I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing,
could have also landed somewhere else,” he said.
On Thursday, the FBI sought to clarify matters with a statement affirming
that the shooting was an “attempted assassination of former President Trump
which 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 been treating the former president since the night of the
July 13 shooting, told The Associated Press on Thursday that any suggestion
Trump’s ear was bloodied by anything other than a bullet was reckless.
“It was a bullet wound,” said Jackson. “You can’t make statements like
that. It leads to all these conspiracy theories.”
In his letter Friday, Jackson insisted “there is absolutely no evidence”
Trump was struck 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 over 20 years in the
United States Navy, including as a combat physician 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
significant experience evaluating and treating patients with similar wounds, I
completely concur with the initial assessment and treatment provided by the
doctors at nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital on the day of the shooting.”
The FBI declined to comment on the Jackson letters.
Asked if the campaign would release those hospital records, or allow the
doctors who treated him there to speak, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven
Cheung blasted the media for asking.
“The media has no shame in engaging in disgusting conspiracy theories,” he
said. “The facts are the facts, and to question an abhorrent assassination
attempt that ultimately cost a life and injured two others is beyond the pale.”
In emails last week, he told the AP that “medical readouts” had already
been provided.
“It’s sad 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
deficient or willfully 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
Friday, saying the fact Trump had been hit by a bullet “was made
clear in briefings my office received and should not be a point of contention.”
“As head of the FBI, you should not be creating confusion about such
matters, as it further undercuts 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 storied FBI has lost the confidence of
America!”
“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.
There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” he wrote.
On Friday, he called Wray’s comments “so damaging to the Great People that
work in the FBI.”
Jackson has encountered 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 over the last 20 years, he might
live to be 200 years old.”
He was reportedly demoted by the Navy after the Department of Defense
inspector general released a
scathing report on his conduct as a top White House physician that
found Jackson had made “sexual and denigrating” comments about a female
subordinates and took prescription-strength sleeping medication that prompted
worries from his colleagues about his ability to provide proper medical care.
Trump appointed Wray as FBI director in 2017 to replace the fired James
Comey. But the then-president swiftly soured on his hire as the bureau
continued its investigation into the Russian election interference.
Trump flirted openly with the idea of firing Wray as his term drew to a
close, and he lashed out anew after the FBI executed a search warrant at his
Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to recover boxes of classified documents from his
presidency.