Donald Trump could have been hit by shrapnel rather than a bullet during his attempted assassination, the director of the FBI has suggested.
Thomas Crooks, 20, tried to assassinate the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July.
Mr Trump dropped to the floor after a bullet appeared to narrowly miss his head and graze his ear when the gunman opened fire – killing one person and wounding two others.
But at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, FBI director Christopher Wray suggested it was unclear whether he was hit by a bullet or something else.
“There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” he said.
“As I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.”
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The FBI in a statement on Thursday said it had been “consistent and clear that the shooting was an attempted assassination”.
A Trump campaign spokesperson, Jason Miller, called the idea that Trump was not hit by a bullet a “conspiracy,” adding an expletive.
Representative Ronny Jackson, who was formerly Mr Trump’s chief medical advisor, called Mr Wray’s remarks “absolutely irresponsible” on social media.
He said they marked “another politically motivated move by the man that has repeatedly weaponized his office to tear down President Trump,” and added he had seen the wound.
Mr Wray was nominated as FBI director by Mr Trump in August 2017.
The FBI director also told the committee hearing that Crooks had searched for details on the assassination of John F Kennedy in the week leading up to the attempt.
Lee Harvey Oswald killed Mr Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963, while the then-president was travelling in a motorcade.
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Mr Wray said the Google search “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”, thought to have been carried out on 6 July, was “significant” in terms of Crooks’s “state of mind”.
“That is the same day that it appears he registered” for the Trump rally, scheduled for 13 July, Mr Wray added.
Crooks’s motive remains unknown, Mr Wray said, adding: “A lot of the usual repositories of information have not yielded, anything notable in terms of motive or ideology.”
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It comes after the director of the US Secret Service resigned over the assassination attempt on Tuesday after she called it the “most significant operational failure” in decades
Kimberly Cheatle told the House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday that members of the public had pointed out a suspect to law enforcement officers before the shooting – and admitted the agency was told about a suspicious person “between two and five times”.
“We failed. As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse,” Ms Cheatle said.
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Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress have both been demanding answers following the assassination attempt.
The director of the US Secret Service said the assassination attempt on Mr Trump was the “most significant operational failure” in decades.
Kimberly Cheatle told the House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee she took “full responsibility for any security lapse”, before resigning days later.
