Speculation has been rife for nearly two weeks about whether Trump was grazed by a bullet (or shrapnel) or injured by other debris when 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on Trump and a crowd at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Wray said in congressional testimony on Wednesday that investigators have not reached a conclusive conclusion, but Trump and his Republican allies have maintained that Trump was shot.
The FBI said Friday that the Republican presidential candidate was shot.
“The bullet that struck former President Trump in the ear was either a whole bullet or a fragmented bullet fired from a deceased individual’s rifle,” the department said in a statement.
A Washington Post analysis of photos and video from the shooting found that former President Trump’s injuries were consistent with those caused by gunshot wounds and not by shrapnel, according to trauma surgeon Babak Salani and colleagues. The study was assisted by Dr. Joseph Sakran, chief of trauma and acute care surgery at George Washington University Hospital and chief of emergency surgery at Johns Hopkins University, who reviewed the Washington Post analysis.
“Typically, shrapnel travels in a random pattern. It’s shrapnel, so it doesn’t travel in a straight line. This really does look like a linear tear, is how I would describe it,” Salani told the Post. “So the fact that it’s traveling in a straight line leads me to believe that it’s not shrapnel, but the projectile itself.”
A high-velocity bullet, such as the one believed to have been fired by Crooks, would transfer energy at a speed that would create an “explosive effect” on impact with the body, causing extensive damage. Salani said a graze wound like the one sustained by the former president would not create that effect.
“The bullet literally just grazes you, so very little of the energy gets transferred to your body. The rest just dissipates into the air,” he added. “So if you’re ‘lucky,’ the bullet just grazes you.”
Just hours after the assassination attempt, Trump began claiming he had been shot.
“A bullet went through the top of my right ear,” he wrote in a Truth Social post published at 8:42 pm on July 13, less than three hours after the shooting. “I knew right away something was wrong because I heard a whoosh and a gunshot and felt the bullet penetrate my skin. I was bleeding badly and knew what was going on.”
Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee that it was unclear what exactly caused Trump’s injury. “With regard to former President Trump, we are in question as to whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that struck his ear,” he told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former White House physician who has monitored Trump’s health since the assassination attempt, criticized Wray’s comments.
“There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a gunshot wound,” Jackson said in an update on Trump’s health. “Congress should correct the record, as the hospital and I have confirmed. It is erroneous and inappropriate for Director Wray to suggest otherwise.”
Seven days after the assassination attempt, Trump released a letter from Jackson, which said he treated Trump for a two-centimeter wound on his right ear and that he underwent a CT scan of his head and other tests, but did not release the results. Jackson said in the letter that Trump was initially treated by medical staff at Butler Memorial Hospital and that he met with the former president later that evening at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Lausanne, wrote Wray on Friday, asking him to “correct his testimony before Congress on Wednesday in which he suggested it was unclear whether President Donald J. Trump was hit by a bullet, glass or shrapnel.”
“It is clear to everyone that President Trump survived the assassination attempt by just millimeters, as the assassin’s bullet tore through the upper part of President Trump’s ear,” Graham wrote in the letter, which Trump published in a Truth Social post on Friday.
Ray did not mention glass in his testimony.
Graham’s post was one of several from Trump in the past two days criticizing Wray’s testimony.
He made another post late Friday after an FBI statement was released confirming that he had been shot.
“I think that’s the best apology you could get from Director Wray,” he said of the FBI’s conclusion, “but it was totally accepted!”
Michael Kranish contributed to this report.
