FBI director casts doubt on whether Trump was struck by bullet during assassination attempt at rally

The FBI‘s director has cast doubt on whether Donald Trump was struck by a bullet during the attempt on his life at a Pennsylvania political rally.

Christopher Wray was updating Congress about the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler on Wednesday when he made the explosive statement.

‘With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,’ Wray said.

‘I don’t know right now whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have landed somewhere else.’ 

Wray was addressing security failures that allowed gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks to open fire. Crooks, 20, killed firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and injured two others including Trump during the shooting.

The presidential hopeful has since given extensive accounts of the moment he was shot and was seen sporting a bandage over his ear.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has cast doubt on whether Donald Trump was actually shot during the attempt on his life at a Pennsylvania political rally.

‘When I went down, bullets were coming over my head and you hear them, it’s like a zip, zip,’ he said.

The former president claims his Secret Service detail ‘thought it was over when I went down’ because of ‘a lot of blood coming’ after his ear was grazed.

Trump, 78, argued with his agents, telling them how he was ‘not going on a stretcher’ and instead vowed to ‘get up’.

He added that a last minute turn of the head to glance at a screen is what saved him from the bullet. 

‘I’m supposed to be dead. The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn, but to turn at the exact right time and in just 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 struck by a shattered piece of glass when a bullet struck the teleprompter.

The teleprompter theory, however, was debunked when photos showed that both glass screens were in tact after the attack. 

Trump tuned into Wray’s testimony, which also saw him detail how Crooks had researched the assassination of President John F. Kennedy prior to the shooting.

The gunman did a Google search one week prior of ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’ according to Wray, who said the 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 Crooks, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Wray said his understanding was that a bullet or some shrapnel ‘is what grazed his [Trump’s] ear’ during the attempted assassination in Butler on July 13 

Trump pumped a fist at the crowd and appeared to mouth ‘fight’ before being escorted off the stage by his security detail on July 13, 2024. 

‘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, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.

The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.

The investigation has thrust the bureau into a political maelstrom months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing for details about what may have motivated Crooks.

‘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. 

The hearing had been scheduled well before the shooting as part of the committee’s routine oversight of the FBI and the Justice Department.

Questions about the shooting dominated the session, but other topics included the FBI’s diversity efforts, election interference, the Jan 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and whether Wray had personally observed any cognitive decline in meetings with Biden prior to his decision to withdraw from the election.

His answer that he had not witnessed any issues with the president’s mental state left Trump unimpressed, with the Republican nominee calling for Wray to resign.

‘I watched the Congressional Hearing today as Christopher Wray was asked the question whether or not he noticed any Cognitive Degeneration in his many conversations with Crooked Joe Biden,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday.

Members of the crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania rushed to his aid following the shooting

The presidential hopeful has since given extensive accounts of the moment he was shot and was seen sporting a bandage over his ear

‘ 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!’

The FBI was not involved in ensuring security for the rally and has therefore avoided the same level of scrutiny directed at the Secret Service over the lapses that preceded the event. 

On Tuesday, Kimberly Cheatle resigned as the agency’s director amid mounting questions over her the colossal security failures at the rally.

Cheatle took responsibility for the catastrophic lapses after she was lambasted by Republicans and Democrats alike when she appeared before Congress on Monday.

The security chief had faced mounting questions over why an agent was not stationed on the roof from where Crooks opened fire on the former president, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage even when a threat was detected.

Crooks had been identified as a suspicious person hours before the shooting took place.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has dramatically announced her resignation after the massive security failures that led to the attempted assassination on Donald Trump

Wray’s testimony before Congress touched on security failures which allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to open fire despite being identified as a suspicious person on the day of the shooting

He was shot dead by a sniper but not before he was able to discharge a volley of bullets into the crowd. 

Wray said Crooks used mechanical equipment on the ground and vertical piping, to hoist himself up onto the roof of a squat manufacturing building that was within 135 meters (157 yards) of the stage. 

He fired eight shots from an AR-style rifle before he was killed. 

The Warren Commission report that analyzed the Kennedy assassination assessed that Kennedy had been shot through the neck at a range of 174.9 feet to 190.8 feet.