During his testimony before a House Judiciary Committee this week, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the following that provided fodder for the "Trump didn't really get shot" conspiracy crowd:
FBI Director Wray: "There's Some Question About Whether Or Not It's A Bullet Or Shrapnel" That Hit Trump
— RCP Video (@rcpvideo) July 25, 2024
More: https://t.co/OcjvmkoEFM pic.twitter.com/z88ILFaiuj
Wray testified that he hadn't really noticed anything that would indicate President Biden was in decline but didn't want to concede that, yes, it was a bullet that hit Trump. Yep, we're in the best of hands.
That testimony was enough for the FBI to later issue this clarification:
FBI clarifies -- it was a bullet -- only after Director Wray fed the conspiracy theorists, who won't believe it when the FBI says what really happened. Wray was incredibly irresponsible -- or worse -- to speculate as he did. https://t.co/NYaIjZbxx6
— Byron York (@ByronYork) July 27, 2024
From the Associated Press:
Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump’s near assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president’s ear, moving to clear up conflicting accounts about what caused the former president’s injuries after a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.
“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,” the agency said in a statement.
The one-sentence statement from the FBI marked the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump’s injuries and followed ambiguous comments earlier in the week from Director Christopher Wray that appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.
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But Wray's testimony served a purpose, and it's a troubling one.
The director of the FBI stoked false Blue Anon conspiracy theories in a congressional hearing. https://t.co/hTjAiga19n
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) July 26, 2024
That's exactly what happened.
Deliberate. He’s not that dumb.
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) July 27, 2024
Chris Wray is scum. We all know exactly what he was doing. And if Alex Jones can be fined a billion dollars for falsely claiming a shooting never happened, we should hold the FBI director to the same standard when he perjures himself before Congress in service of yet another… https://t.co/0MPtMlFLGi
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 27, 2024
The “glass shard” truthers made it from X, to MSNBC and the NY Times, all the way to the Director of the FBI in less than two weeks. pic.twitter.com/4GWG1IRiN3
— Katie Scarlett (@Katiescarlet2) July 27, 2024
Narratives ebb and flow in very predictable ways.
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