The FBI tonight released a statement saying that Trump was, in fact, struck by a bullet, either hole or fragmented in smaller pieces. Now, this comes after FBI Director Christopher Ray this week said there were still some questions about whether Trump was hit with a bullet or shrapnel. Cnn Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, John Miller, is with me. Talk about what the latest is.

Well, the latest is that the director put to bed this tempest in a shell casing, which is, was it a bullet? Was it shrapnel? The standard is If you're grazed by a bullet, you are shot. If you were hit by a bullet fragment, you were shot. That is a day-long battle about semantics that seem to get way out of hand, which is the reason for this statement that came out late this afternoon. They're still going to do the work, though. The FBI shooting Reconstruction team has been on the ground. They've used the 360-degrees total station platform that takes measurements from every point of the crime which is quite large, to where the shooter was, to where the stage was, to where Donald Trump was, to where the other victims were. They do that so that if there's a measurement they need later that they didn't take, they can go back into that system and task it to that measurement down to the small It's like an actual machine they bring. It's a digital machine, the Nikon Total station or other brands that will do this 360 up and down picture. You can literally go back to the crime scene and get anything that was recorded on The day you recorded that is still there in the measurements and everything else.

But they'll look for BIMs, bullet impact marks. They'll look for bullet holes. They will take swaps for lead residue, copper residue, and they will match that to the bullets that were still in the magazine, to the bullets that were fired through the gun. And they're going to go through all this to document as much as they can.

I knew Chris Ray had testified that the shooter had looked up how far away was Oswald from Kennedy. That investigation is still very much underway.

Yes. And that is about his preparation. He, in his phone, had numbers for the Trump headquarters, had numbers for the Biden headquarters, had multiple pictures of both men, and lots of pictures of other political figures. But we know that just a few days before, in early January, when they announced that Trump rally, he began the planning for that place. He did a reconnaissance trip there days before the rally. He purchased a ladder in case he needed it, but discarded it. He flew his drone for 11 minutes, 200 yards back to get a complete picture of that roof. He was doing what the profilers call the pseudo commando. He had assumed this identity as this sniper with equipment and range finders and extra ammunition and magazines, homemade bombs run by remote control. He had become this other person, and apparently, where there's usually leakage of that, hence dropped to other people. We haven't heard much about any of that.

Do we know has his family cooperated? I know they haven't spoken publicly.

His family has been totally cooperative since the very first night. They were interviewed that night and established their son's identity through photographs that were taken of him at the scene before he was shot by law enforcement who was already tracking him. They have been questioned once by those agents, again by other agents from the Pittsburgh field office, and we'll likely be talking to the behavioral analysis profilers who are going to have different questions, more about what was home life like? What was your son talking about? How much time did he spend doing different things? Did he ever hint at anything like this?

The FBI, just a few minutes ago, did release this sentence saying, What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet. Whether hole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject's rifle. Now, why the statement came out at this time is, well, there was a debate, and it was ignited by the director of the FBI, Christopher Ray, who just testified to Congress this week that it wasn't clear whether Trump was hit by a bullet.

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.

Trump responded to Ray today saying, Perhaps FBI Director Christopher Ray will notice there is no shrapnel or glass flying through the air, only a blood-stained bullet. It's also damaging to the great people that work in the FBI. Out front now is the former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Director McCabe, let me just read that statement from the FBI because obviously, Ray had testified that maybe it was unclear whether it was a bullet or not. And then they came out with this statement a moment ago, and they said, What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet. Whether were fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject's rifle. So they're being excruciatingly clear there. What really happened here? Why would it take the FBI two weeks to release that?

Well, Well, you know, Aaron, what happened here, unfortunately, was a bit, I think, of a self-inflicted wound that the director brought on himself in the organization with his testimony the other day. And I should say that I thought his testimony was great. He put out a lot of information, very Some details that we had not heard before. Give him a lot of credit for that. But this was a bit of an off-handed reference. It may not have even been in his prepared talking points. It opened up all this speculation about whether or not Trump had actually been hit by a bullet or something else. The statement that we got just a few minutes ago, I think, is really artfully drafted because it essentially says the same thing he said in his testimony. It says whether he was definitely hit by a bullet, whether whole or in part. That's what he said in his testimony slightly differently. He said, We're not sure if he was hit by a bullet or some piece of shrapnel. Well, part of a bullet, you could describe as shrapnel. So they're really being very artful here, but clearly, they're trying to put a wet blanket on this fire, which is consuming the agency's attention at a time when they don't need that.

Right. No, absolutely not. Although, and I understand you're saying artful, I do think it is, I guess, the implication had been from that off-handed comment that maybe it wasn't a bullet at all, right? That it was a piece of a teleprompter or something like that, and that obviously incensed Trump. So now they're being clear it was indeed a bullet or part of a bullet. The New York Times today had published its own investigation, actually, and they had some pretty compelling analysis of the bullet's trajectory. They had that incredible picture, right? That when you slow down, you see the vapor trail of the bullet seeming to go by his head, and they had concluded it was likely a bullet that grazed his ear. I guess I'm just wondering Do you think that the FBI didn't think that it was their role to say what hit him or what? It's odd that we're just two weeks here. We haven't obviously heard from his doctors or anything like that either.

Yeah. So you can count on the fact that the FBI is doing a similar investigation. They have all sorts of technology that enables them to essentially recreate the trajectory of every bullet fired in a situation like this. I'm sure they've probably done that. When you look at that stuff as in the Times interviews or the Times investigation, it's pretty clear that that's likely how he was injured. But the Bureau is never going to conclude that positively until they've seen all the evidence. And in this case, one of the pieces of evidence that would be helpful would be the impressions of the surgeons and the doctors who treated him in Pennsylvania. Of course, Mr. Trump has not released the records of that treatment and has not authorized those doctors to speak about how they treated him. So until that happens, there's really that one key piece of evidence that they haven't been able to review. And I would guess that that is impacting their desire not to be 100 % sure publicly at this point.

That's interesting. Well, we saw him today for the first time without his bandage. But as you point out, even though we saw that we don't yet have and may never get anything, you can see him here from the doctors on the scene that they have not been authorized. Well, McKape, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

Sure thing. Good to see.