The FBI director revealed that investigators still do not know if it was a bullet or shrapnel that grazed Donald Trump’s ear in his assassination attempt.
Christopher Wray said in a marathon consultation of the United States House Judiciary Committee that the FBI is still working to determine precisely what hit the former president’s ear during the shooting.
“From what I understand, it was [a bullet] or shrapnel that grazed his ear,” he said.
Asked by lawmakers whether the FBI knew where the eight bullets fired by gunman Thomas Crooks were at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Mr. Wray added, “There are questions about whether it’s a bullet or shrapnel. “projectile 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 scratch, could have also landed somewhere else.
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 gunman who killed US President John F. Kennedy with the cleverest of snipers in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
“It’s clearly a significant search in terms of his mental state. This is the same day he appears to have registered” for Trump’s rally scheduled for July 13 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 killed via a Secret Service countersniper, acted alone.
“We don’t know the reason. “This is clearly one of the central questions of our investigation, and it has been very frustrating for us to discover that many of the same old places we would locate have not provided significant clues about their motivations,” Array said Mr. Wray.
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 was not concerned with the security of the demonstration, as the duty fell to the Secret Service.
On Tuesday, Kimberly Cheatle resigned as the agency’s director, amid harsh denunciations of the security lapses that allowed the shooting.
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