It seems like only yesterday when FBI Director Christopher Wray was questioning whether or not Donald Trump was actually shot by Thomas Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. (Oh, that's right. It was only yesterday.) It appears that someone at the Bureau realized that Wray had really put his foot in his mouth and made the agency look even worse than it already does in the midst of this befuddling investigation. Either that or Wray himself was forced to look in the mirror.
In either event, the FBI put out a statement yesterday confirming that Trump was indeed struck by one of the eight bullets that Crooks fired, though they left open the possibility that he might have been struck by a bullet "fragment." Since this was never anything but a political conspiracy theory put forward by leftists, it would be nice if the FBI could simply focus on the actual crime scene investigation, but we're left with dealing with the Bureau that we have, not the one we might wish we had.
From the NY Post:
The FBI confirmed Friday that a bullet struck Donald Trump’s ear during the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. — two days after the top official at the bureau said there was “some question” about what hit the former president.“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,” read a statement released by the FBI.The bureau’s acknowledgment that Trump, 78, was indeed hit by one of the rounds fired by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks comes after the ex-commander in chief fumed over FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
In a seemingly sarcastic response to the FBI's statement, Donald Trump released a reply saying that he "fully accepts Christopher Wray's apology." Of course, the statement didn't have Wray's name on it and there was no formal apology included, but it's not hard to read between the lines and see what's going on in the background.
As far as the bullet fragmentation theory goes, ballistics experts have already weighed in on the question. In the early days of weapons manufacturing, such a thing was indeed possible if the bullets were poorly designed or constructed. Particularly in the era of muzzle-loading weapons, it was also possible that an overly large charge of black powder could shatter a bullet as it was leaving the barrel. But in the modern era, it simply doesn't happen. The closest thing we have to that is the pellets found in most shotgun shells. Thomas Crooks was not firing a shotgun. He used a rifle. So Donald Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet.
One might imagine that a person who has been in the law enforcement game as long as Christopher Wray would already know this. But then again, that might be a faulty assumption. Keep in mind that Wray has never worked directly in law enforcement. As a youth, he attended private school and he obtained his initial college degree in philosophy. He then went on to law school. When not working toward political office, he worked as an attorney in private practice. I can't confirm that he's ever once fired a firearm of any type to say nothing of knowing the finer points of how they operate.
Suggesting that Trump was actually struck by shrapnel still sounds like a highly politicized thing to say, and I suspect that there is at least an element of that involved in this mess. But in reality, it may simply have been ignorance. Someone at the Bureau who actually knows something about firearms might have seen his statement and recoiled in horror before putting out the correction we saw yesterday. In any event, the damage has already been done. Christopher Wray's credibility is in tatters and he needs to follow the Secret Service Director out the door.
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