At one point, Republican Representative Kevin Kiley asked, “How close did the assassin’s bullet come to killing President Trump?” Wray responded that he didn’t know the actual distance, but “my understanding is that either [the bullet] or some shrapnel is what grazed his ear.”
Later in the hearing, Wray replied to a question from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan about where the eight bullets fired by Thomas Crooks went. “With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray again said. However, in affirming that the FBI “accounted for” all of the shots, he added, “I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.”
Over the weekend, Trump told a Michigan crowd, “I took a bullet for democracy.” The same day, Axios reported on a memo, written by Trump’s former White House physician and shared by his campaign, that stated the bullet struck Trump’s ear, coming “less than a quarter of an inch from entering [Trump’s] head” and “produc[ing] a 2 cm wide wound.”
