Trump was shot a year ago today. The conspiracy theories about it persist
The footage from the incident shows Trump flinch, raise his hand to his ear, and check it to find blood before crouching down behind the lectern. He appeared in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a few days later to accept the Republican presidential nomination with a bandage on his ear.
The FBI later deemed that a bullet had struck Trump in the ear, either whole or fragmented, though unfounded conspiracies initially questioned if it was glass or some other piece of shrapnel that injured the president.
But a year later, the conspiracy theories haven't stopped. A quick scroll through X shows close-ups of Trump's ear comparing recent and old photos and false theories that the assassination attempt was staged.
Here is what we do know about the shooting, and what questions remain:
More: One year after Trump's attempted assassination, how politics has changed
On July 13, 2024, Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman positioned on a rooftop near the rally fired multiple shots toward the then-presidential candidate.
Trump was shot in the ear and ducked behind the lectern as Secret Service agents swarmed him and ushered him off stage. However, they did not get him out of public sight before he raised a fist in the air as blood streaked down his face in a photo moment that would be a defining image of his campaign.
The shooter was later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, and he was killed by law enforcement. Crooks appeared to have acted alone and did not belong to any particular political leanings.
A spectator at the rally was killed, and two were critically injured.
Yes, multiple pieces of evidence show Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet.
A bipartisan congressional task force was created in the weeks following the first attempt to "investigate all actions by any agency, department, officer, or employee of the federal government, as well as state and local law enforcement (LLE) or any other state or local government or private entities or individuals, related to the attempted assassination," according to a December report from the task force.
A timeline of events included in the report shows Crooks fired three shots at 6:11 p.m., with one round hitting Trump's ear before his detail immediately covered his body. A few seconds later, Crooks fired five more shots, the report stated.
A week after the shooting, Trump's previous White House physician Rep. Ronny Jackson issued a memo on Trump's injury.
"The bullet passed, coming less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear," the memo posted to X read. "The bullet track produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear."
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CNN that the doctors' reports indicated it would just be a surface-level wound with no further complications.
Trump has mentioned multiple times that he still experiences a "throbbing feeling" in his ear where he was shot.
Between the incident in Butler and a second apparent attempt on Trump's life two months later at his golf course in Florida, some Republicans also stirred up conspiracies about the shooting. Trump himself blamed Democrats for the plots while on the campaign trail.
The congressional task force report argued that the Secret Service and other federal agencies failed in some of their planning, execution and leadership. The Secret Service also said on July 10 it disciplined six staffers with suspensions without pay between 10 days and six weeks, and it was implementing some of the recommendations from the congressional report.
Trump, now in office, said he was briefed by multiple agencies on the shooting in a previewed clip of an interview with daughter-in-law Lara Trump.
"They briefed me and I'm satisfied with it," Trump said on Fox News' "My View with Lara Trump." "There were mistakes made, and that shouldn't have happened ... I have great confidence in these people."
But Rep. Mike Kelly, the Pennsylvania Republican who chaired the task force, said he was continuing to push for more answers about the agencies' failures.
"We can't quit on it because we never got the answers," Kelly said in June in an interview with the USA TODAY Network at his Butler office. "The public deserves to know what happened that day."
Contributing: Zac Anderson, Matthew Rink, Bart Jansen, Josh Meyer, Jeanine Santucci, David Jackson, USA TODAY Network
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Was Trump really shot? Yes, despite conspiracy theories, see evidence
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