More media outlets are beginning to report on the FBI’s uncertainty regarding whether a bullet or shrapnel wounded Donald Trump’s ear.
NBC quotes the FBI describing that their Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to investigate (though most of that story has turned into Republican flopsweat).
In a statement Thursday, the FBI said, “Since the day of the attack, the FBI has been consistent and clear that the shooting was an attempted assassination of former President Trump which resulted in his injury, as well as the death of a heroic father and the injuries of several other victims.”
“The FBI’s Shooting Reconstruction Team continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing,” the statement added.
The NYT describes that the FBI seems to be focused on whether metal fragments, not glass from the teleprompters, hit Trump.
In a social media post Thursday night, Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Wray, saying: “No wonder the once storied F.B.I. has lost the confidence of America!”
Mr. Trump said there was no glass and no shrapnel. “No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”
The F.B.I. said in a statement that the bureau “has been consistent and clear that the shooting was an attempted assassination of former President Trump, which resulted in his injury, as well as the death of a heroic father and the injuries of several other victims.”
It is not unusual for the type of bullet that Mr. Crooks fired from his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to tumble end over end and break apart after hitting even a small solid object. Gun experts say a fragment might, for instance, have hit a metal stanchion.
Still, a bullet could have grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, and the F.B.I. has not ruled that out. Investigators found eight rifle casings on the roof where the shooter was positioned.
See AlsoCommon law, common ground, and Jefferson's principle.Civil Engineers Must Design The Structures In Such A Way As To Allow For Expansion And Contraction OfTouching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer - Christian Classics Ethereal LibraryLearner Reviews & Feedback for Data Visualization with Python Course | CourseraIt is not clear if investigators have eliminated other potential sources of debris. But bureau analysts appear to be focused on metal fragments, as opposed to glass from the teleprompters onstage. Photos of the teleprompters next to Mr. Trump show they were intact after the bullets were fired.
Much higher in the story, though, NYT reveals something funny: after not subpoenaing Trump in the Mueller inquiry, blowing off Trump’s efforts to extort campaign help from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after needing a search of his home to retrieve some subset of the classified documents Trump stole, the FBI has finally asked Donald Trump for an interview.
The bureau has asked to interview Mr. Trump as part of its broader investigation, hoping to provide insights into the shooting and possibly a more complete record of his injury, the official said,
This is going to be like the Feds getting Al Capone on taxes, isn’t it?
As noted by NYT, in response to all the attention, Trump has posted on the social media site he has propped up by influence laundering, insisting he was hit by a bullet (though mentioning only glass as an alternative), and then making a claim about his hospital diagnosis.
If Trump is going to make claims about what the hospital report says, then by all means he can ask them to release his records, including the CT scan results, and give a press conference.
Perhaps now — almost two weeks after the attack — journalists will start askinghim for those records?
Update: Just above the story quoting an FBI source about the possibility that metal shards injured Trump, NYT posts a visual investigations piece suggesting those (like the FBI) still considering explanations other than the bullet are speculating.
The only reason people have revisited this is because of Wray’s testimony.
Today’s visual analysis does not factor in Michael Harrigan’s comment, made about the Doug Mills photo showing something flying by Trump. Harrigan suggested the angle of the bullet was too low to hit Trump’s ear.
That is the assessment of Michael Harrigan, a retired F.B.I. special agent who spent 22 years in the bureau.
“It absolutely could be showing the displacement of air due to a projectile,” Mr. Harrigan said in an interview on Saturday night after reviewing the high-resolution images that Mr. Mills filed from the rally. “The angle seems a bit low to have passed through his ear, but not impossible if the gunman fired multiple rounds.”
[snip]
In Mr. Harrigan’s last assignment, he led the bureau’s firearms training unit and currently works as a consultant in the firearms industry.
“Given the circ*mstances, if that’s not showing the bullet’s path through the air, I don’t know what else it would be,” he said.
Update: Trump’s Candy Man Ronny Jackson has rolled out another propaganda report.
Note that he says Trump was “evaluated and treated for a “Gunshot Wound to the Right Ear.”
But he doesn’t say that they concluded it was a gunshot wound.
Nor does he add to the description of Trump’s treatment from his last propaganda vehicle. It’s time for a practicing physician to tell us what happened with Trump’s injury.
I wonder if Savage Librarian or anyone else wants to craft lyrics about Jackson’s propaganda set to the Candy Man.
Update: The FBI has released a statement clarifying that if Trump was hit by shrapnel, it was shrapnelfrom the bullet.
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.
Other coverage
As I’ve noted repeatedly in my posts on this, I’m pushing this issue largely for normative reasons. It is inexcusable that Trump’s failure to share his medical records has been largely ignored, even as the same press scrum was chasing conspiracy theories that Biden was hiding a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Here are my past posts on this.
Ronny Jackson Memory Holes His Nephew’s Injury
Since Leaving Butler, Trump Has Foregone the Best Medical Care and Is Withholding CT Scan Results
Will Peter Baker Exhibit the Same Tenacity about Medical Records on the Trump Shooting as He Did a Parkinson’s Conspiracy Theory?
Will Alex Jones Accuse Donald Trump of Being a Crisis Actor?
