U.S. Secret Service agents remove Republican presidential candidate former president Donald Trump from the stage with blood on his face during a campaign rally at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, PA on Saturday, July 13, 2024.
The FBI said Friday that a bullet struck Donald Trump's ear during an assassination attempt on the former president this month at a campaign rally after the bureau’s director suggested to Congress that it could have been shrapnel.
“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 FBI said in a statement.
The statement comes two days after FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump nominated to his post in 2017, told House lawmakers that "there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear."
Wray had testified about the FBI's ongoing probe into the assassination attempt. A gunman identified as Thomas Crooks, 20, was shot and killed after opening fire from an elevated post not far from Trump's July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that left one spectator dead and two others critically injured.
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The director's remarks before a House committee sparked widespread backlash among Republican lawmakers, as well as Trump.
Trump referred to the new FBI statement in a social media post Friday night.
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"I assume that’s the best apology that we’ll get from Director Wray, but it is fully accepted!," he wrote on Truth Social.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had also criticized Wray's testimony.
“We’ve all seen the video, we’ve seen the analysis, we’ve heard it from multiple sources in different angles that a bullet went through his ear. I’m not sure it matters that much,” Johnson said on Thursday.
Wray’s testimony came the same day the House approved a resolution to create a bipartisan task force to examine the assassination attempt.
Before the FBI put out its statement Friday night, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had written a letter to Wray urging him to revise his testimony, saying, "the attempted assassin’s bullet ripped the upper part" of Trump's ear, and that it "should not be a point of contention."
Graham said Friday night, after the FBI's statement, that Wray should never have suggested otherwise.
"Glad the FBI confirmed what everyone else knew. It was a bullet that struck President Trump. The statement by the FBI Director should’ve never been made," Graham wrote on X.
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