OPINION:
The left is trying to memory-hole the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. To downplay the significance of what happened on July 13, the FBI director openly wondered whether the former president was shot at all.
“With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear,” said Christopher Wray at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last Thursday.
Nobody outside crazed left-wing circles has any doubt Mr. Trump was shot before a crowd of supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania. Unlike with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we have more than the grainy Zapruder film to go on. This was the first attempt on a former or current president’s life to be recorded simultaneously from multiple angles by hundreds of high-definition cameras.
New York Times photographer Doug Mills even captured the photograph of a lifetime — Mr. Trump speaking at the lectern as a bullet streaked past his head. It’s a bullet, not a ricochet, and not a supernatural fragment of glass from a teleprompter.
Perhaps Mr. Wray was too busy opening new prosecutions of people who rioted 3½ years ago at the U.S. Capitol to notice Mr. Trump’s teleprompters were intact throughout the event.
There is a video showing the bullet striking Mr. Trump’s ear at the moment the former president turned his head to point to a chart displayed on a large television monitor. A straight line can be drawn from the shooter’s rooftop position to Mr. Trump’s upper right ear.
Clear lines can also be drawn to retired firefighter Corey Comperatore, who was killed, as well as the two others in the crowd who were wounded. As the gunman fired multiple rounds before the Secret Service responded, there’s no need to invent a magic projectile theory.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, the Texas Republican who served as White House physician for President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump, had harsh words for Mr. Wray after reviewing Mr. Trump’s injuries.
“There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet,” Dr. Jackson said in a statement Friday. “Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself.”
Feeling the heat, the FBI retreated in a statement attributed to the bureau: “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.”
Bullets don’t break apart in flight, so even in walking back his misstatement, Mr. Wray is indulging leftist conspiracy theories to suggest it could be a “fragment.” James Comey, Mr. Wray’s predecessor as FBI director, used similar tactics in turning the Steele dossier into a political weapon against Mr. Trump.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign spread the fallacious document, enabling biased FBI agents to effectively say “there’s some question” about whether Mr. Trump was a Russian agent. In a matter of days, investigators realized the dossier’s supposed evidence was unsubstantiated nonsense, but the FBI kept mum about its findings.
By continuing its baseless investigation for years, FBI leadership left a cloud of doubt over the Republican candidate who became president.
One hopes if Mr. Trump moves back into the White House next year that he will have learned his lesson about the wisdom of retaining the FBI director. Mr. Wray confirmed last week he is unfit to continue holding the office.
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