Former US President Donald Trump on Friday responded to suggestions that his wound in an assassination attempt was caused by “shrapnel,” releasing a letter from his former doctor saying it was almost certainly caused by a bullet.
“There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” Ronny Jackson, now a Republican congressman from Texas, wrote on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social. Trump retweeted the message.
FBI chief Christopher Wray told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday that there was some question “about whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear.”
Trump was wounded in his right ear during a July 13 campaign rally in Pennsylvania, surviving what the FBI called an assassination attempt when a gunman fired eight bullets at him during a speech.
There has been no confirmation of the nature of Trump's injury from medical, law enforcement or government officials, and Wray's comments were the first details on record from a senior official on the matter.
According to authorities, two protesters were seriously injured in the attack and a 50-year-old Pennsylvania firefighter was shot dead. The gunman was killed by a U.S. Secret Service sniper.
Since the shooting, Trump has made the attack a key part of his campaign speech, telling a crowd in Michigan that he “took a bullet for democracy.”
At the Republican National Convention, where he was anointed the party's nominee for president, Trump said he had “God on my side” when describing the attack.
And at Trump's campaign rallies, many of the former president's supporters have taken to wearing bandages on their right ears, in reference to the attack.
On Thursday, Trump denied Wray's comments and accused him of political partisanship.
“Unfortunately, it was a bullet that hit my ear and it hit me very hard. There was no glass or shrapnel,” he explained.
A New York Times investigation published Friday said that “a detailed analysis of bullet trajectories, images, photographs and audio … strongly suggests that Trump was grazed by the first of eight bullets fired by the gunman.”
The Trump campaign has not released any medical reports or statements from his current doctor, instead citing Jackson, a former White House physician who is a staunch political ally of the former president.
Jackson has been the subject of controversy in the past. A 2021 US Department of Defense investigation found that he had “belittled, belittled, intimidated and humiliated his subordinates” while serving in the White House.
It also found he had “made sexual and derogatory statements about one of his female medical subordinates” and raised concerns about his use of sleeping pills while on duty.
Jackson was demoted from his rank of rear admiral to captain by the US Navy following the investigation, US media reported in March.
