Trump Ear Healing Is Consistent With Bullet Grazing Skin, Ballistics Expert Says

Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet during the assassination attempt … at least that’s what a ballistic expert gleans from the way the former president’s injured ear is healing.

Leonard Romero — a forensic firearms examiner who’s worked alongside the LAPD and several other law enforcement agencies in this field — tells TMZ … Trump’s ear healing so quickly isn’t evidence he wasn’t hit (as some have suggested), but on the contrary … it’s actually consistent with a graze from a bullet, as opposed to a more direct impact.

The way Leonard, explains it … a graze only impacts the skin’s surface — it’s more like a scrape or a scratch, and doesn’t cause heavy damage, even when the bullet is from an AR-15 assault rifle, as was the case here.

Trump was bleeding from the ear after Thomas Matthew Crookssqueezed off shots at him during his July 13 rally in Pennsylvania … then he wore a massive bandage to the ensuing RNC, where he accepted the GOP presidential nomination, and has since ditched the bandage altogether … and his ear has no major scarring viewable to the naked eye.

FBI director Christopher Wray at first said there was some question whether or not Trump was struck by a bullet … but the FBI ultimately backtracked and said, “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.”

Leonard says video from the shooting gives no indication Trump was grazed by a bullet fragment … instead, he tells us he’s confident the bullet grazed Trump’s ear before hitting anything else … and doesn’t believe Trump was cut by broken glass from a teleprompter.

Of course, we’d heard from someone plugged into the Secret Service that he possibly was cut by glass — or some other material that ricocheted off the bullet — but Romero doesn’t seem to agree.

In any case — it sounds like Trump got super lucky here … Leonard says a .223 caliber bullet like the one the shooter used causes devastating wounds on direct impact.

Again, Trump’s ear is still intact and not scarred or mangled … which backs up what Leonard’s saying here.