WASHINGTON: Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, the FBI on Friday confirmed that the bullet actually struck the former president in the ear, resolving conflicting claims about what wounded him after a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.
“The bullet that struck former President Trump in the ear was fired from the deceased's rifle, either as a whole bullet or as fragments of a single bullet,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI statement is the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump's injuries yet, and follows vague comments from FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier in the week that seemed to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been shot.
The remarks angered President Trump and his supporters, and fueled conspiracy theories on both sides of the aisle amid a lack of information following the July 13 attacks.
So far, federal law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and the Secret Service, have repeatedly refused to provide information about the cause of Trump’s injuries. Trump’s campaign has also refused to release medical records from the hospital where he was initially treated or to allow questions to be asked of the doctors.
Instead, the update came from Trump himself or from Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former White House physician, a staunch ally who currently represents Texas in Congress. Jackson has treated Trump since the night of the attack, but he has faced significant scrutiny and is not Trump’s personal physician.
The FBI's reluctance to immediately vouch for the former president's claims of wrongdoing, and the anger he and some of his supporters have expressed toward the FBI since the shooting, have created new tensions between the Republican nominee and the nation's top federal law enforcement agency, and he could soon seek to reassert control of the FBI.
Trump and his supporters have repeatedly accused federal law enforcement of using weapons against him.
Questions about the extent and nature of Trump's injuries have been raised since the attack, as his campaign and law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about his condition or the treatment he received after he narrowly escaped death after being shot by an assailant with a high-powered rifle.
These questions remain despite photos showing the trail of a projectile flying over Trump's head, photos showing the glass of Trump's teleprompter still intact after the shooting, and Trump himself saying on a Truth Social post just hours after the shooting that he was “struck by a bullet above my right ear.”
“I knew immediately something was wrong,” he wrote. “I heard a buzzing sound, a gunshot, and I immediately felt the bullet tearing my skin.”
In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee a few days later, Trump detailed the gruesome scene, with a large white gauze bandage wrapped around his right ear.
“I heard a loud buzzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard in my right ear. I said to myself, 'Wow, what was that? It has to be a bullet,'” he said.
Trump said that if he had not moved his head at the last moment, “the assassin's bullet would have hit the target perfectly, and I would not be here tonight.”
But the first medical account of Trump’s condition didn’t come until a week after the shooting, when Jackson released his first letter Saturday evening, in which he said the bullet that struck Trump “created a two-centimeter-wide wound that went down to the cartilaginous surface of his ear.” He also said Trump had undergone a CT scan at the hospital.
But federal law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation, including the FBI and the Secret Service, have declined to confirm that account, and Wray's testimony provided conflicting answers on the issue.
“I have some doubts as to whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit him in the ear,” Ray testified, seemingly implying that it was indeed a bullet.
“I don't know if that bullet could have landed anywhere else besides causing the scratch,” he said.
The next day, the FBI sought to clarify the matter in a statement, saying the shooting was “an assassination attempt that resulted in the injury of former President Trump, the death of a heroic father, and the injuries of several other victims.” The FBI also said Thursday that its shooting reconstruction team was continuing to examine bullet fragments and other evidence at the scene.
Jackson, who has treated the former president since the July 13 shooting, told The Associated Press on Thursday that any suggestion that Trump’s ear was bleeding from something other than a bullet is “ridiculous.”
“It was a gunshot wound,” Jackson said. “You can't say that. That would lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories.”
In a letter sent Friday, Jackson argued there was “absolutely no evidence” that Trump was hit by anything other than a bullet, and said “any suggestion that anything else was wrong and inappropriate.”
He wrote that the Republican candidate was rushed to Butler Memorial Hospital after the shooting and was diagnosed and treated for “a gunshot wound to the right ear.”
“Having served as an emergency medicine physician in the U.S. Navy for over 20 years and as a combat physician in the Iraq theater,” he wrote. “I have treated numerous gunshot wounds over the course of my career. Based on my direct observation of the injuries, the relevant clinical background, and my considerable experience evaluating and caring for patients with similar wounds, I fully agree with the initial assessment and treatment provided by the nurses and physicians at Butler Memorial Hospital on the day of the shooting.”
The FBI declined to comment on Jackson's letter.
Asked whether Trump's campaign would release hospital records or allow the doctors who treated him there to comment, Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheng criticized such demands.
“The media has no shame in engaging in disgusting conspiracy theories,” he said. “Facts are facts, and it is outrageous to question the abhorrent assassination attempt that ultimately took one life and injured two others.”
He told the AP in an email last week that “the medical reading” had already been provided.
“It’s sad that some people still don’t believe that a shooting occurred,” Cheung said. “Even though one person was killed and others were injured.”
He added that people who believe in conspiracy theories are “either mentally defective or deliberately spreading falsehoods for political reasons.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Calif., a close Trump ally, also urged Wray to correct his testimony in a letter to the FBI director Friday, saying the fact that Trump was shot was “clearly made clear in the briefings my office received and should not be a matter of dispute.”
“As FBI director, I cannot afford to be confused about this issue,” he wrote. “Creating confusion will only further diminish the credibility of the FBI for millions of Americans.”
Trump also criticized Wray in a post on his Truth Social network, saying, “No wonder the once-popular FBI has lost America's trust!”
“No, unfortunately it was a bullet that hit my ear, and it hit hard. There was no glass, no shrapnel,” he wrote.
On Friday, he slammed Wray's comments as “very damaging to the fine people who work at the FBI.”
Jackson has been under intense scrutiny for years.
After Trump underwent a physical in 2018, he made headlines when he said, “If I had eaten healthier over the last 20 years, I could have lived to be 200.”
Jackson was demoted from the Navy after the Defense Department inspector general released a scathing report on his behavior as the White House's chief physician, which found that he made “sexual and derogatory” comments about female subordinates and used prescription-strength sleeping pills, causing colleagues to worry about whether he could provide adequate care.
Trump appointed Wray as FBI director in 2017 to replace the fired James Comey. But the then-president quickly grew antagonistic toward Wray’s hiring as the FBI continued its investigation into Russian election interference.
President Trump publicly considered firing Wray toward the end of his term, and again lashed out after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and recovered boxes of classified documents from his presidency.
