After FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested during a House hearing on Wednesday that a gunman’s bullet may not have struck former President Donald Trump, a liberal news outlet is now entertaining the idea.
Under the headline “Donald Trump Might Not Have Been Shot After All,” Newsweek national correspondent Khaleda Rahman delves into Wray’s statements during a House oversight hearing on Wednesday, where he provided an update on the FBI’s investigation into the Secret Service’s failure to protect President Trump from a deranged gunman.
In his remarks, the Bureau chief noted that it remains unclear whether Trump was hit in the right ear by a bullet from the gunman’s AR-15 rifle or injured by shrapnel, which could have come from a teleprompter screen also struck. Following the shooting, Trump shared with his followers on Truth Social that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
One week after the near-death experience, former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) released a statement noting that the former president was shot with a rifle round “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear.” Trump, he added in his statement, is “doing well, and he is recovering as expected,” he added. Newsweek editors obviously ran with a far-left rumor that President Trump is embellishing the shooting to garner sympathy and inflated support in the polls, despite conflicting opinions.
“To the best of your understanding, how close did the assassin’s bullet come to killing President Donald Trump?” California Rep. Kevin Kiley (R) asked Wray, who replied that as he understands the scenario, it could have been either a bullet or shrapnel that “grazed [Trump’s] ear.”
In between grillings by his colleagues, Oversight Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked the director, “We obviously know that Mr. Comperatore lost his life…two other rallygoers were injured, seriously injured, and then the one that hit President Trump. Does that account for…were some of these individuals hit multiple times?” Jordan asked. “Where did all eight bullets go, is I guess my question.” Jordan was referencing Corey Comperatore, the former volunteer firefighter who was killed in the assassination attempt.
Wray did not have the answer but stated, “As I said, I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear. So it’s conceivable, as I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet in addition to, you know, causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else. But I believe we’ve accounted for all of the shots in the cartridges.”
On Wednesday, he confirmed to lawmakers that the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Crooks, had previously surveilled the Pennsylvania rally site with a drone and had rigged his car with explosives. Authorities are still trying to piece together how he managed to elude capture, despite receiving alerts from on-site officers who had lost sight of him before he climbed onto a nearby roof and began firing.
