The FBI director revealed that investigators still do not know if it was a bullet or a piece of shrapnel that grazed Donald Trump’s ear in his assassination attempt.
Christopher Wray said in a marathon consultation by the United States House Judiciary Committee that the FBI was still working to determine precisely what hit the former president in the ear of the shooting.
“From what I understand, it was [a bullet] or shrapnel that grazed his ear,” he said.
Asked through lawmakers whether the FBI knew where the eight bullets fired by shooter Thomas Crooks were at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Mr. Wray added, “You wonder whether or not it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit him in the ear, so it’s conceivable. “Because I’m sitting here right now, I don’t know if that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, may have landed somewhere else as well.
Wray also revealed that the shooter had been searching for other public figures online and that a week before the shooting, he allegedly searched: “How far is Oswald from Kennedy?”
The July 6 online search concerns Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed U. S. President John F. Kennedy with the smartest of snipers in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
“It’s obviously a meaningful search in terms of their mental state. This is the same day he appears to have registered” for Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, he told the House Judiciary Committee.
The FBI is investigating the shooting, in which one rally attendee was killed and two others wounded, as an act of domestic terrorism.
Researchers say they’ve established a detailed timeline of Crooks’ online movements and activities, but their exact motives (or the explanation for why Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has been selected) remain elusive.
The FBI’s assessment remains that Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service countersniper, acted alone.
“We don’t know the reason. This is evidently one of the central questions of our research, and it is very frustrating for us to discover that many of the same objects we found did not provide meaningful clues as to their motives. ” said Mr. Wray. dit.
The criminals reportedly filmed the demonstration a week before the event, stayed there for about 20 minutes, and then returned on the morning of July 13.
More than two hours before the shooting, the FBI said, Crooks flew a drone about two hundred yards from the rally site for about 11 minutes, the device to live stream and view footage.
The use of the drone will raise questions about the security lapses that preceded the shooting.
The FBI doesn’t care about the security of the meeting, and the responsibility falls on the Secret Service.
On Tuesday, Kimberly Cheatle resigned as head of the agency, amid harsh complaints about the security that allowed the shooting.
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