FBI Director Christopher Wray is not sure if former President Donald Trump was hit by a bullet at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. It could have been shrapnel, he said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
“The question is whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit him in the ear. As I sit here now, I don’t know if that bullet could have gone anywhere other than to cause a scratch,” Wray said.
He used the word shrapnel, which can mean both a fragment of the projectile itself and a hit object. Immediately after the assassination attempt, there were speculations that Trump was hit by shrapnel from a fragmented reading device, but they are unfounded according to numerous media outlets, writes The Guardian.
The FBI chief also told lawmakers that the gunman had been searching the Internet for information about how Lee Harvey Oswald killed former President John F. Kennedy. According to Wray, Crooks Googled the question “how far was Oswald from Kennedy.”
Trump disagrees with Wray’s words. He said shortly after the shooting that he was hit by a bullet that went through the top of his right ear.
“I knew right away something was wrong because I heard hissing, gunshots and immediately I felt a bullet go through my skin. I was bleeding profusely so I knew what was going on,” Trump said.
Former White House physician Ronny Jackson responded to Wray’s statement in a post on social networking site X, calling the FBI chief’s comments “absolutely irresponsible” and “politically motivated” against Trump.
“What little credibility he might have left disappeared after he recklessly suggested that Trump might not have been hit by a bullet. It was a bullet. I saw the wound!” Jackson said.
The 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, tried to shoot Trump as the Republican presidential candidate addressed supporters at a rally in Butler. At the same time, he was only 150 meters away from the former president. Trump received only a minor ear injury, and the shooter was immediately eliminated by members of the secret service, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
