WASHINGTON: Nearly two weeks after the near-killing of Donald Trump, the FBI confirmed on Friday that it was indeed a bullet that grazed 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 rally in Pennsylvania.
“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whole or fragmented, fired from the deceased's rifle,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI's statement marked the most definitive law enforcement report on Trump's injuries and followed mixed comments from Director Christopher Wray earlier in the week that appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.
The comment infuriated Trump and his allies and further fueled conspiracy theories that have flourished on both sides of the political aisle amid a dearth of information since the July 13 attack.
Until now, federal law enforcement officials involved in the investigation, including the FBI and the Secret Service, have repeatedly refused to provide information on the cause of Trump's injuries. Trump's campaign also refused to release medical records from the hospital where he was first treated or to make doctors available for questioning.
Instead, updates 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 been treating Trump since the night of the attack, he is heavily scrutinized and is not Trump's primary physician.
The FBI's apparent reluctance to immediately vouch for the former president's version of events — along with the anger he and some supporters have directed at the bureau after the shooting — also heightened tensions between the Republican nominee and the nation's top federal law enforcement agency, which he could soon regain control of. .
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly accused federal law enforcement of using guns against him.
Questions about the extent and nature of Trump's injuries began immediately after the attack, as campaign officials and law enforcement officials declined to answer questions about his condition or the treatment he received after Trump narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt by a high-altitude gunman. motorized rifle.
Those questions remained despite photos showing a shell flying past Trump's head, photos showing the intact glass of Trump's teleprompter after the shooting, and what Trump himself gave in a message to Truth Social hours after the shooting. which says he was “shot”. by a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.'
“I immediately knew something was wrong: I heard a whistle, gunshots, and immediately felt a bullet rip through my skin,” he wrote.
Days later, in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump detailed the gruesome scene while wearing a large white gauze bandage over his right ear.
“I heard a loud whistle and felt something hit me very, very hard on my right ear. I said to myself, “Whoa, what was that? It can only be a bullet,” he said.
“If I hadn't shaken my head at that very last moment,” Trump said, “the assassin's bullet would have hit squarely and I wouldn't be here tonight.”
But the first medical information about Trump's condition didn't come until a week after the shooting, when Jackson released his first letter last Saturday night. In that letter, he said the bullet that hit Trump “created a 2 cm wide wound that extended to the cartilaginous surface of the ear.” He also reported that Trump received a CT scan at the hospital.
But federal law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and the Secret Service, declined to confirm the information. And Ray's testimony offered apparently conflicting answers to that question.
“There's some doubt as to whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that went into his ear,” Ray testified, before seeming to suggest that it was indeed a bullet.
“I don't know if that bullet could have landed anywhere other than what it hit,” he said.
The next day, the FBI tried to explain the situation with a statement saying that the shooting was “an attempted assassination of former President Trump that left him injured, as well as the death of a heroic father and injuries to several other victims.” The FBI also said Thursday that its image 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 by anything other than a bullet was rash.
“It was a gunshot wound,” Jackson said. “You can't make such statements. It leads to all these conspiracy theories.”
In his letter Friday, Jackson insisted there was “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 Republican candidate was taken after the shooting, he was evaluated and treated for a “gunshot wound to the right ear.”
“Having served as an emergency physician for over 20 years in the United States 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 first-hand observations of the injury, my relevant clinical background, and my extensive experience evaluating and treating patients with similar wounds, I wholeheartedly agree with the initial assessment and treatment provided by the nurse practitioners at Butler Memorial Hospital on the day of the tragedy. execution”.
The FBI declined to comment on Jackson's letters.
When asked whether the company would release those hospital records or allow the doctors who treated him there to speak, Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheng blasted the media for the question.
“The media is not shy about engaging in disgusting conspiracy theories,” he said. “Facts are facts, and to call into question a despicable assassination attempt that ended up costing a life and injuring two others is inappropriate.”
In emails last week, he told the AP that “medical evidence” had already been provided.
“It's unfortunate that some people still don't believe the shooting happened,” Cheng said, “even after one person was killed and others were injured.”
Anyone who believes in conspiracies, he added, “is either mentally retarded or deliberately spreading lies for political reasons.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, RSC, a close Trump ally, also called on Wray to correct his testimony in a letter to the FBI director on Friday, saying the fact that Trump was hit by a bullet “was made clear in the briefings that my office received and should not be the subject of disputes”.
“As head of the FBI, you must not create confusion on such matters, as it further undermines the confidence of millions of Americans in the agency,” he wrote.
Trump also lashed out at Wray in a post on Truth Social, saying “No wonder the once famous FBI has lost America's trust!”
“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit the ear, and hard. There was no glass, there were no fragments,” he wrote.
On Friday, he called Wray's comments “so damaging to the great people who work at the FBI.”
Jackson has faced considerable scrutiny over the years.
After Trump's medical examination in 2018, he attracted headlines for suggesting that “if he had followed a healthier diet for the past 20 years, he could have lived to be 200.”
He was reportedly demoted by the Navy after the Defense Department's inspector general released a scathing report on his conduct as the White House's chief physician, which found that Jackson made “sexual and derogatory” comments about female subordinates and accepted prescription sleeping pills that raised concerns among his colleagues about his ability to provide adequate medical care.
Trump appointed Wray in 2017 to replace the fired James Comey as FBI director. But the then-president quickly rescinded his hire as the bureau continued its investigation into Russian election meddling.
Trump openly flirted with firing Wray as his term came to an end, and he lashed out again after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to retrieve boxes of classified documents from his presidency.
