WASHINGTON: Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president's ear, seeking to dispel conflicting reports about the cause of 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, either whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject's rifle,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI statement is the clearest account of Trump's injuries from law enforcement and follows ambiguous comments from Director Christopher Wray earlier in the week that cast doubt on whether Trump was actually hit by a bullet.
The comment drew the ire of Trump and his allies and further fueled conspiracy theories that flourished on both sides of the political spectrum in the face of a lack of information following the July 13 attack.
So far, federal officials involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, have repeatedly refused to provide any information about the cause of Trump's injuries. Trump's campaign team has also refused to release medical records from the hospital where he was first treated or to make the doctors there available for questions.
Updates instead 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 is under considerable scrutiny and is not Trump's primary care physician.
The FBI's apparent reluctance to immediately confirm the former president's account – and the anger he and some of his supporters have directed at the FBI after the shooting – have also created new tensions between the Republican candidate and the country's most important federal law enforcement agency, over which he could soon regain control.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly accused federal authorities of using them as weapons against him.
Questions about the severity and nature of Trump's injuries began to emerge immediately after the attack. Representatives of 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 assassination attempt with a high-powered rifle.
These questions persist despite photos showing the trail of a projectile whizzing past Trump's head, photos showing Trump's teleprompter glass intact after the shooting, and Trump's own statement in a Truth Social post hours after the shooting in which he said he was “struck by a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately that something was wrong because I heard a hissing sound, gunshots and immediately felt the bullet go through the skin,” he wrote.
A few days later, in a speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee accepting his nomination, Trump described the horrific scene in detail while wearing a large white gauze bandage over his right ear.
“I heard a loud hissing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard in my right ear. I thought to myself, 'Wow, what was that? It has to be a bullet,'” he said.
“If I hadn't moved my head at that very last moment,” Trump said, “the assassin's bullet would have hit its target perfectly and I wouldn't be here tonight.”
But the first medical report on Trump's condition did not come until a full week after the shooting, when Jackson released his first letter last Saturday night. In it, he wrote that the bullet that struck Trump “caused a one-inch wound that extended to the cartilage surface of the ear.” He also announced that Trump had received a CT scan at the hospital.
But federal agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and Secret Service, refused to confirm this report, and Wray's testimony apparently provided contradictory answers on the subject.
“It is questionable whether his ear was struck by a bullet or shrapnel,” Wray testified, before appearing to imply that it was indeed a bullet.
“I don't know if the bullet could have landed somewhere else besides the grazing shots,” he said.
The following day, the FBI attempted to clarify the matter with a statement confirming that the shooting was an “assassination attempt on former President Trump, resulting 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 incident reconstruction team continues to examine bullet fragments and other evidence from the crime 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 gunshot wound,” Jackson said. “You can't say that. That 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 “false and inappropriate to suggest otherwise.”
He wrote that the Republican candidate was examined and treated for a “gunshot wound to the right ear” at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was taken after the shooting.
“I served as an emergency medical technician in the U.S. Navy for over 20 years, including as a combat medic on the battlefield in Iraq,” he wrote, “and have treated many gunshot wounds in my career. Based on my direct observations of the injury, my relevant clinical background, and my extensive experience evaluating and treating patients with similar wounds, I fully agree with the initial assessment and treatment provided by the doctors and nurses at Butler Memorial Hospital on the day of the shooting.”
The FBI declined to comment on the Jackson letters.
When asked whether the campaign team would release the hospital records or give the floor to the doctors who treated him there, Trump's campaign spokesman Steven Cheung sharply criticized the media for demanding this.
“The media has no shame in engaging in disgusting conspiracy theories,” he said. “Facts are facts, and to question a heinous assassination attempt that ultimately took one life and injured two others is outrageous.”
In emails last week, he told the AP that “medical results” had already been presented.
“It's sad that some people still don't believe there was a shooting,” Cheung said, “even after one person was killed and others were injured.”
Anyone who believes in these conspiracies, he added, “is either mentally handicapped or is deliberately spreading untruths for political reasons.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close Trump ally, also urged Wray to correct his statement in a letter to the FBI director on Friday. He said the fact that Trump was hit by a bullet was “made clear in the briefings my office received and should not be a point of contention.”
“As FBI chief, you should not create confusion on such matters, which further undermines the agency's credibility with millions of Americans,” he wrote.
Trump also attacked Wray in a post on his social network Truth, saying: “No wonder the once historic FBI has lost America's trust!”
“No, unfortunately it was a bullet that hit my ear, hard. There was no glass, there were no splinters,” he wrote.
On Friday, he called Wray's comments “so damaging to the great people who work at the FBI.”
Jackson has faced considerable criticism over the years.
After undergoing a physical examination in 2018, Trump made headlines by saying that he “could live to be 200 years old if he had eaten healthier for the last 20 years.”
He was reportedly demoted from the Navy after the U.S. Department of Defense's inspector general released a scathing report on his conduct as chief White House physician. It found that Jackson had made “sexual and derogatory” comments about female subordinates and taken prescription sleeping pills, raising doubts 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 became dissatisfied with his hiring as the FBI continued its investigation into Russian election interference.
Trump openly toyed with the idea of firing Wray toward the end of his term and struck again after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to seize boxes full of classified documents from his time as president.
