When it comes to his take on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, FBI Director Christopher Wray’s own underlings aren’t backing him up in one key regard.
In testimony Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, Wray suggested twice that Trump was not hit by a bullet fired from the gun of would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, during an outdoor rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
In Washington on Tuesday, less than a week later, Wray’s own second-in-command contradicted him — and Americans have Republican Sen. John Kennedy to thank for forcing it to happen.
During a hearing Tuesday of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, Kennedy asked FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate point blank if anyone at the FBI doubted Trump had been struck by a bullet.
The answer is, apparently no one does but Chrisopher Wray. Abbate’s response was unequivocal.
Check it out here:
Sen. John Kennedy: “Is there any doubt in your mind or in the collective mind of the FBI that President Trump was shot in the ear by a bullet fired by the assassin?”
FBI Deputy Director: “There is absolutely no doubt in the FBI’s mind […] There never had been.”
Sen. Kennedy:… pic.twitter.com/vNY7QKvsKM
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 30, 2024
“Is there any doubt in your mind, or in the collective mind of the FBI, that President Trump was shot in the ear by a bullet fired by the assassin Crooks,” Kennedy asked, with unmistakeable stress on the word “bullet.”
“Senator, there’s absolutely no doubt in the FBI’s mind whether former President Trump was hit with a bullet and wounded in the ear. No doubt. There never has been.
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“I’ve been part of this investigation since the very beginning, and that has never been raised.”
Kennedy, being Kennedy — a conservative known as much for his colorful speech as his outspoken opinions — drove the point home with some clearly farcical elaborations.
“It wasn’t a space laser? It wasn’t a murder hornet? It wasn’t Sasquatch?” he asked. “It was a bullet?”
“It was a bullet, senator,” Abbate answered.
“Fired by Crooks, that hit President Trump in the ear and almost killed him?” Kennedy persisted.
“One-hundred percent, senator,” Abbate confirmed.
The first takeaway from the exchange is that the deputy director of the FBI had just called his boss a liar. In his widely criticized testimony last week, Wray claimed, “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.”
At another point in the hearing, he said it was a bullet “or some shrapnel.”
But it raises an even bigger question: Why would Wray even go in that direction?
It’s not like the precise description of the projectile that almost killed Trump in the middle of an assassination attempt is critical to the big picture. The fact that matters is that there was an assassination attempt, enabled by a clearly incompetent — or worse — Secret Service.
It was an assassination attempt that was deadly serious — as evidenced by the fact that an innocent man was murdered in the process and two others were critically wounded. And it was almost successful.
So the actual effect of Wray’s testimony wasn’t so much to clarify anything about the event itself in Butler, Pennsylvania, on a history-making Saturday evening in July. It was to give the impression that he was downplaying how damn close Trump came to death — to give Democrats and the establishment media a talking point and tarnish some of the luster surrounding Trump’s reaction to the moment.
Wray didn’t make Trump look bad. Wray made himself look ridiculous as his top lieutenant fact-checked the boss and effectively told the Congress of the United States that the director of the FBI is either a liar or a fool.
Considering no one gets to be the head of the FBI by being a fool, the answer as to which is obvious.
