Donald Trump has been fiercely critical of the FBI. The FBI confirms that an investigation is underway into whether Trump was actually hit by a bullet during an assassination attempt.
The presidential candidate lashed out at the agency’s director, Christopher Wray, after he suggested that Trump may have been grazed by shrapnel near his ear following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI has now confirmed that this is the case investigation into fragments found near the stage to determine what caused the Republican candidate’s injuries, after Wray told a congressional hearing there was “some doubt” about what actually happened.
The agency hopes to interview Trump as part of the investigation, New York Times Reports.
The former president, however, remains steadfast in his version of events, saying it was a “bullet that hit my ear, and it hit me really hard.”
Donald Trump has criticized the FBI as the agency confirmed it is investigating whether he was actually hit by a bullet during an assassination attempt
In an angry post on Truth Social, Trump criticized Wray’s suggestion and criticized his judgment on other timely issues, including Biden’s mental state.
“FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday he wasn’t sure if I was hit by shrapnel, glass or a bullet (the FBI never checked!),” he fumed.
“But he was certain that Crooked Joe Biden was physically and cognitively ‘boring’ – Wrong! Therefore he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals flooding into our country in record numbers.
“His sole focus is destroying J6 Patriots, looting Mar-a-Lago, and saving radical leftist lunatics like the ones now in Washington DC burning American flags and spray painting our great national monuments – without any retaliation.
‘No, unfortunately it was a bullet that hit my ear, and hard. There was no glass, there was no shard.
“The hospital called it a ‘bullet wound to the ear,’ and that’s what it was. No wonder the once legendary FBI has lost America’s trust!”
Wray was updating Congress about the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler on Wednesday when he made the explosive statement.
“With respect to former President Trump, there is a question as to whether the man’s ear was hit by a bullet or shrapnel,” Wray said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has raised doubts about whether Donald Trump was actually shot during the attempt on his life at a political rally in Pennsylvania
“I don’t know at this point if that bullet, besides causing the scraping, went anywhere else.”
Wray cited security lapses that allowed gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks to open fire. Crooks, 20, killed firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and wounded two others, including Trump, in the shooting.
The presidential candidate has since given extensive accounts of the moment he was shot and was seen with a bandage over his ear.
“When I went down, the bullets were flying over my head and you could hear them, it was like a zip, zip,” he said.
The former president claims his Secret Service unit “thought it was over when I went down” because “there was a lot of blood coming out” after his ear was grazed.
Trump, 78, argued with his agents, telling them he was “not going on a stretcher” but instead “standing up.”
He added that by turning his head at the last moment and looking at the screen for a moment, he was saved from the bullet.
“I should be dead. The most incredible thing was that not only did I turn, but I turned at the right time and in exactly the right amount,” he added, saying he survived “by luck or by God.”
Some initial reports on the day of the shooting speculated that Trump may have been hit by a piece of glass when a bullet struck the teleprompter.
However, the autocue theory was debunked when photographs showed that both glass screens were intact after the attack.
Trump listened to Wray’s testimony, in which he also detailed how Crooks had investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy prior to the shooting.
The shooter had Googled “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?” a week earlier, Wray said. He said the suspect was interested in public figures but had left no clear indication of ideological motivations.
The July 6 online search, which was found on a laptop the FBI says is linked to Crooks, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who shot and killed Kennedy from a sniper position in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
![Wray said he believed a bullet or shrapnel had hit his body. [Trump's] ear' during the attempted murder in Butler on July 13](https://i0.wp.com/nybreaking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FBI-director-doubts-Trump-was-hit-by-bullet-during-attempted.jpeg?resize=634%2C537&ssl=1 "FBI probes whether Trump was REALLY shot by assassin's bullet after director's bombshell claim - as ex president unleashes on agency 20")
Wray said he believed a bullet or shrapnel had hit his body. [Trump’s] ear’ during the attempted murder in Butler on July 13
“That is a search that is clearly significant in terms of his state of mind. That is the same day that he appears to have registered” for the Trump rally, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.
The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.
The investigation has plunged the agency into a political maelstrom just months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing for details about what may have motivated Crooks.
“We don’t know the motive. That’s clearly one of the central questions in our investigation, and it’s very frustrating to us that many of the usual low-hanging-fruit places that we would find have not yielded significant clues as to his motive,” Wray said.
The hearing had been scheduled well before the shooting as part of the committee’s routine oversight of the FBI and the Justice Department.
The session focused on questions about the shooting, but other topics included the FBI’s diversity efforts, election interference, the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol and whether Wray personally observed cognitive decline during meetings with Biden prior to his decision to withdraw from the election.
Trump was unimpressed by his response that he had not experienced any problems with the president’s mental state. The Republican presidential candidate called on Wray to resign.
“I watched the hearing in Congress today where Christopher Wray was asked if he noticed any cognitive degeneration in his many conversations with Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
Members of the crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, rushed to his aid after the shooting
The presidential candidate has since given extensive accounts of the moment he was shot and was seen with a bandage over his ear
‘Wray should immediately resign from the FBI and stop ‘kissing’ Congress every time he goes up the ranks, which he loves to do. After all, everyone can see that Joe Biden is cognitively and physically challenged.
“And if you can’t see that, you certainly can’t run the FBI – Unless you want to illegally run the Mar-a-Lago Raid. Wray needs to resign, and NOW, because he SPOKE AGAINST CONGRESS!”
The FBI was not involved in ensuring security at the rally and was therefore able to avoid the same level of scrutiny as the Secret Service for its pre-event deficiencies.
On Tuesday, Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director of the agency amid mounting questions about the massive security lapses at the meeting.
Cheatle took responsibility for the catastrophic failures after being criticized by both Republicans and Democrats when she appeared before Congress on Monday.
The security chief has faced mounting questions about why there was no officer on the roof from which Crooks opened fire on the former president, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage even when a threat was detected.
Crooks was identified as a suspect hours before the shooting.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has dramatically announced her resignation following the massive security failures that led to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Wray’s testimony before Congress focused on the security lapses that allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to open fire despite being identified as a suspect on the day of the shooting.
He was shot dead by a sniper, but not before he could fire a volley of bullets into the crowd.
Wray said Crooks used ground-based mechanical equipment and vertical piping to hoist himself onto the roof of a low production building 135 meters (157 yards) from the stage.
He fired eight shots from an AR-style rifle before he was killed.
The Warren Commission report, which analyzed the Kennedy assassination, found that Kennedy was shot in the neck at a range of 53 to 58 yards.
