(Headline USA) 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 conspiracy theories from leftists doubting whether a bullet 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 following false statements earlier in the week from FBI Director Christopher Wray that appeared to cast doubt on whether a bullet had actually hit Trump.
The comment from Wray drew fury from many and further stoked left-wing conspiracy theories, known as BlueAnon, that have flourished 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, Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a staunch ally who now represents Texas in Congress.
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.
Conspiracy theories about the extent and nature of Trump’s wound began immediately after Trump narrowly escaped death.
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.”
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., 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.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
