 "Did a bullet really hit Donald Trump during the Pennsylvania rally shooting?")
Donald Trump was the target of an assassination bid at a rally in Pennsylvania.
It was a last-minute head tilt that saved his life.
But did a bullet hit the former United States President?
The FBI director has his doubts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the July 13 shooting, which is being seen as one of the most shocking failures of US Secret Service agents.
Let’s take a closer look.
Did the bullet really hit Trump?
Wray informed lawmakers during a hearing held by the House judiciary committee on Wednesday in Washington that the exact cause of Trump’s ear injuries from the shooting at his Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally earlier this month remained unknown, according to Newsweek.
The shooting killed one rallygoer and seriously injured two others before the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by the US Secret Service.
“To the best of your understanding, how close did the assassin’s bullet come to killing President Donald Trump?” California Representative Kevin Kiley asked Wray.
Wray replied that his understanding was that either a bullet or a piece of shrapnel “is what grazed (Trump’s) ear.”
The committee chair, Rep. Jim Jordan, questioned Wray later in the hearing if the gunman had fired all eight bullets had been accounted for.
“We obviously know that Comperatore lost his life…two other rallygoers were injured, seriously injured, and then the one that hit President Trump. Does that account for…were some of these individuals hit multiple times? Where did all eight bullets go, is I guess my question,” Jordan asked.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWray said he did not have that information to hand, according to The Guardian, adding, “As I said, I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.
“So it’s conceivable, as I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet in addition to, you know, causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else. But I believe we’ve accounted for all of the shots in the cartridges,” he added.
Wray was discussing the security lapses that led to the assassination attempt, which included Crooks being allowed to attend the rally, despite being identified as a suspicious person.
What does Trump say?
The Republican presidential nominee gave comprehensive details of the assassination attempt.
Trump claimed in a statement on Truth Social that he had been shot and that the bullet had pierced the upper portion of his right ear shortly after the incident.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening,” he said.
The 78-year-old also posted a recovery memo shared by his former White House doctor and now Republican representative Ronny Jackson.
However, Trump did not allow medical professionals to talk about his condition publicly.
Just days after the shooting, Trump spoke at the Republican National Convention that the bullet “came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life.”
“I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear,” he described the scene.
In the days following the shooting, Jackson examined the wound, he subsequently revealed the details on a conservative talk show.
“It (the bullet) was far enough away from his head that there was no concussive effect from the bullet, and it just took the top of his ear off,” he said, according to DailyBeast.
Whether Trump was struck by a bullet or shrapnel doesn’t really matter politically because the picture of a wounded Trump raising his fist has come to represent resilience during a crucial election year.
After the incident, he was seen with an ear bandage at the Republican National Convention.
Many of his supporters also covered their ears with bandages during the event as a show of support.
How did the former president respond?
Responding to Wray’s doubts during the hearing, Trump shared a post on Truth Social calling for the FBI director’s resignation.
This wasn’t because of his doubts, but as he claimed to find his interactions with Democratic President Joe Biden “uneventful and unremarkable, stating that he found nothing wrong, mentally or physically, with Joe."
“If that is the case, Director Wray should resign immediately from the FBI, and stop “sweet talking” Congress every time he goes up, which he loves to do, because anybody can see that Joe Biden is cognitively and physically challenged, and if you can’t see that, you sure as hell can’t be running the FBI — unless, that is, you want to illegally lead the Raid on Mar-a-Lago. Wray has to resign, and NOW, for LYING TO CONGRESS!”
Jackson also called Wray’s comments to lawmakers “absolutely irresponsible” and “politically motivated” against Trump on X.
“What little credibility he may have left is GONE after recklessly suggesting Trump might not have been hit from a bullet,” Jackson said. “It was a bullet,” he added. “I’ve seen the wound!”
ABSOLUTELY IRRESPONSIBLE for Chris Wray to make such a statement as Director of the FBI.
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) July 25, 2024
Another POLITICALLY MOTIVATED move by the man that has repeatedly weaponized his office to tear down President Trump.
What little credibility he may have left is GONE after recklessly… https://t.co/hMftzOpZqV
What else do we know about the assassination bid?
Wray offered fresh insights about the assassination attempt.
The FBI director talked about how Crook’s gun had an easily hidden collapsible stock.
In his testimony, Wray disclosed that Crooks had ascended to the top of a building within the stage’s reach by use of vertical pipework and mechanical equipment on the ground.
The gunman is also believed to have done a Google search one week before the shooting of “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” Wray said Wednesday, revealing new details about a suspect he said had taken a keen interest in public figures but had otherwise not left behind clear clues of an ideological motive.
The July 6 online search, recovered from a laptop the FBI says is tied to Thomas Matthew Crooks, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
“That’s a search obviously that is significant in terms of his state of mind. That is the same day that it appears that he registered” for the Trump rally scheduled for July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee, according to the Associated Press.
The agency has built out a detailed timeline of Crooks’ movements and online activity, but the precise motive — or why Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was singled out — remains elusive, Wray said. The FBI’s assessment continues to be that Crooks acted alone.
“We do not know the motive. That is obviously one of the central questions in our investigation, and it’s been very frustrating to us that a lot of the usual kind of low-hanging-fruit places that we would find that have not yielded significant clues about his motive,” Wray said.
Crooks is believed to have visited the rally site a week before the event, staying for about 20 minutes, and then returned on the morning of July 13. More than two hours before the shooting, Wray said, Crooks flew a drone about 200 yards from the rally stage for about 11 minutes, using the device to livestream and watch footage.
The use of the drone, which along with a controller were recovered from Crooks’ car, so close to the rally site just hours before Trump took the stage add to the questions about the security lapses that preceded the shooting.
With inputs from agencies
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