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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that Donald Trump was hit by a bullet, or a fragment from one, fired by the would-be assassin at the former US president and Republican presidential nominee at his Pennsylvania rally earlier this month.
“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 bureau said in a brief statement on Friday.
Reacting to the FBI's statement, Trump told his supporters that he has accepted an apology from the FBI after its director informed lawmakers that the wound in his right ear following an assassination attempt might have come from a bullet.
“They (FBI) apologised. We accept their apology,” Trump told his cheering supporters on Friday at Turning Point USA's "The Believers Summit" in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump, 78, escaped an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on July 13 when he was shot at while addressing an election rally. The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by the Secret Service.
“Did you see the FBI today apologise? They said, well, it might have been a bullet, but it might have been glass. Oh, really? Where did the glass come from? Or it might have been shrapnel. Where did the shrapnel come from? No, they then said it was a bullet,” Trump said at the rally.
FBI Director Christopher Wray during a Congressional hearing earlier this week told lawmakers that they were still analysing evidence to determine what hit Trump: a bullet, shrapnel, glass or something else.
On Friday, the FBI in a statement confirmed that it was a bullet.
The FBI's confirmation that the former president was struck in the ear by a bullet marks its latest attempt to quell a political uproar. The new statement is the most direct yet from federal law enforcement about Trump's injury, though it changes little in practical terms, CNN reported.
Questions about Trump's wound have stoked political backlash, as the former president has said he “took a bullet for democracy” and attacked Wray on his social media platform over his testimony.
For his part, Trump has previously said that he was hit by an in-tact bullet, writing on his Truth Social platform that “it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard”.