Trump slams ‘politicized’ FBI

The former president has attacked the bureau’s director, Christopher Wray, after his controversial claims at the US Congress

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has slammed the Federal Bureau of Investigation as being politicized and incompetent at its job.

Testifying before Congress on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he wasn’t sure whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or something else at a campaign rally two weeks ago.

“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s [a] bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray told the lawmakers. 

Wray was unsure about the bullet but seemed sure that President Joe Biden was physically and cognitively fine, until Biden dropped out of the race, Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social, late on Thursday.

“That’s why he knows nothing about the terrorists and other criminals pouring into our country at record levels,” Trump continued. “His only focus is destroying J6 Patriots, raiding Mar-a-Lago, and saving Radical Left Lunatics, like the ones now in DC burning American flags and spray painting over our great National Monuments - with zero retribution.”

”No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!” the former president added.

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Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Washington on Wednesday to protest the address to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some of them publicly burned the American flag, while others defaced several monuments with pro-Hamas slogans.

The FBI rounded up thousands of Trump supporters who protested outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Republicans tried to object to declaring Biden the winner of the 2020 election, citing numerous irregularities. In August 2022, the agency raided Trump’s Florida residence in search of classified documents. The Supreme Court later ruled that prosecuting him for official acts was unconstitutional.

The Mar-a-Lago raid and the crackdown on January 6 protesters were repeatedly brought up as reasons why local and state law enforcement around the US no longer trusts the FBI, according to a report compiled by a group of current and former agents. The Bureau is increasingly viewed “as a partisan federal agency motivated by a political agenda,” said the report, which was presented to Congress earlier this week.

Insisting that Wray was “wrong,” Trump said it was indeed a bullet that had nicked his ear at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally. “There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,” Trump posted, adding that the FBI “never even checked” into it. 

The idea that Trump may have been injured by something else, or not at all, has been a popular conspiracy theory among Democrats online. Some people have claimed that he faked the ear injury, while others speculated that a shard from the teleprompter broke off and nicked the presidential candidate. Such rumors have persisted even though a New York Times photographer captured the bloodied bullet as it streaked past Trump and into the crowd behind him.