WASHINGTON: Nearly two weeks after the assassination of Donald Trump, the FBI confirmed on Friday that it was indeed a bullet in the former president's ear, moving to clear conflicting accounts of what caused the former president's injuries when a gunman opened fire at a rally in Pennsylvania. .
“The bullet in former President Trump's ear, either whole or fragmented, was a bullet fired from a deceased person's rifle,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI's statement marked the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump's injuries and followed ambiguous comments from director Christopher Wray earlier in the week that appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been shot.
The comments infuriated Trump and his allies and added to the conspiracy theories that have flourished on both sides of the political aisle amid a lack of information since the July 13 attacks.
Until now, federal law enforcement agents involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, have repeatedly refused to provide information on the cause of Trump's injuries. Trump's campaign has refused to release medical records from the hospital where he was first treated or make doctors there available for questions.
The updates came either from Trump himself or from Trump's former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, a staunch ally who now represents Texas in Congress. Although 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 corroborate the former president's version of events — as well as what he and some supporters directed at the bureau after the shooting — has also fueled fresh tensions between the Republican nominee and the nation's top federal law enforcement agency. , which he could soon control once again.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly accused federal law enforcement of using weapons 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 treatment after Trump narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt by a high-profile gunman. powered rifle.
Those questions persist despite photos showing bullet marks near Trump's head, photos showing Trump's teleprompter glass intact after the shooting, and an account Trump himself wrote within hours of the shooting on Truth Social. A bullet pierced the top of my right ear.”
“I immediately knew something was wrong when I heard a pop, shots and immediately felt a bullet rip into the skin,” he wrote.
Days later, in a speech accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump described the horrific scene with a large, white, gauze bandage over his right ear.
“I heard a loud bang and felt something hit me in my right ear, really, really hard. I said to myself, 'Wow, what happened? It could just be a bullet,' he said.
“If I hadn't taken my head off at the 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 last Saturday evening. In the letter, he said that the bullet that hit Trump left a 2 cm wide wound up to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. He also revealed that Trump had a CT scan at the hospital.
But federal law enforcement involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, declined to confirm that account. And Ray's testimony provided apparently conflicting answers on the issue.
“There's some question about whether it was a bullet or shrapnel in his ear,” Ray testified, before he suggested it was indeed a bullet.
“I don't know if that bullet landed anywhere else besides grazing,” he said.
The next day, the FBI sought to clarify matters with a statement confirming that the shooting was “an attempted assassination of former President Trump that resulted in his injuries, as well as the death of a heroic father and injuries to several other victims.” The FBI also said Thursday that its shooting reconstruction team was continuing 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 bleeding from anything other than a bullet was reckless.
“It was a gunshot wound,” Jackson said. “You cannot make such a statement. That leads to all these conspiracy theories.”
In his letter Friday, Jackson insisted “there is no evidence” Trump was struck by anything other than a bullet and that it was “false and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
He wrote that at Butler Memorial Hospital, where the GOP nominee was taken after the shooting, he was evaluated and treated for a “gunshot wound to the right ear.”
“Having served as an emergency medicine physician in the United States Navy for more than 20 years, including as a combat medic on the battlefield in Iraq,” he wrote, “I have treated many gunshot wounds in my career. My direct observation of injuries, my relevant clinical Based on my background, and significant experience evaluating and treating patients with similar injuries, I fully agree with the initial evaluation and treatment provided by the nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital. Shooting.”
The FBI declined to comment on Jackson's letter.
Asked whether the campaign would release those hospital records or allow the doctors who treated him there to speak, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung threatened to ask the media.
“The media has no shame in engaging in despicable conspiracy theories,” he said. “Facts are facts, and questioning a despicable assassination attempt that ultimately resulted in the loss of life and the injury of two people is certainly out of line.”
In emails last week, he told the AP that “medical readouts” had already been provided.
“It's sad that some people still don't believe the shooting,” Cheung said, “even though one person died and others were injured.”
Anyone who believes in a conspiracy, he added, “is either mentally deficient or is deliberately peddling lies for political reasons.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close Trump aide, also asked the FBI director to correct his testimony in a letter Friday, saying the fact that Trump was shot “was clear in the briefings my office received. And should not be a point of contention.”
“As head of the FBI, you must not create confusion over such matters, because it undermines the agency's credibility with millions of Americans,” he wrote.
Trump also hit out at Wray in a post on his Truth social network, saying, “No wonder the FBI has lost America's trust!”
“No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and it hurt a lot. 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 faced significant scrutiny over the years.
After Trump underwent a physical in 2018, he drew headlines for suggesting that “if he had a healthy diet in the last 20 years, he could live to be 200.”
The Navy allegedly demoted Jackson after the Department of Defense inspector general released a scathing report on his conduct as the top White House physician that found he made “sexual and derogatory” comments about female subordinates and took prescription-strength sleeping pills. Concerns arose from his colleagues about his ability to provide proper medical care.
Trump appointed him in 2017 to replace the fired James Comey as director of the FBI. But the then-president quickly wound up his hire as the bureau continued its investigation into Russian election meddling.
Trump has openly flirted with the idea of firing Wray as his term ends, and he struck a new blow after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to retrieve boxes of classified documents from his presidency.
