White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting suspect charged with attempted assassination

WASHINGTON (CN) — A California man arrested at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday after sprinting past security with a number of weapons faces life in prison after the Justice Department charged him Monday with attempting to assassinate the president.

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, made his initial court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh but did not enter a plea. He will return to court Thursday on the government’s effort to keep him detained before trial.

Justice Department prosecutors charged Allen with three counts including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

If convicted, Allen faces up to life in prison on the assassination charge — 18 U.S. Code Section 1751 — and up to 20 years in prison consecutively on the transportation and discharge of a firearm counts.

Allen was represented by D.C. Federal Defenders Eugene Ohm and Tezira Abe.

Justice Department attorney Jocelyn Ballantine moved to keep Allen detained, noting he traveled across state lines with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38-caliber handgun, three knives and “other dangerous paraphernalia.”

“Allen traveled across state lines, multiple, armed with a firearm, arrived in Washington, D.C. and on April 25 attempted to assassinate the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” Ballantine said.

The Justice Department, in an unsealed affidavit, included a letter Allen sent to his family and a former employer apologizing for his actions and explaining his motivation.

“I am a citizen of the United States of America,” Allen wrote. “What my representatives do reflects on me. And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

Allen laid out a hierarchy of targets, with Trump administration officials — he explicitly excluded FBI Director Kash Patel — prioritized “highest to lowest,” and Secret Service agents, Hilton security and law enforcement officials labeled as targets if they got in his way.

Allen signed the message “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” using an online moniker tied to several social media and gaming accounts.

U.S. Attorney for Washington Jeanine Pirro said in a press conference following Allen’s appearance that he will likely face additional charges as the investigation continues.

“The Constitution and the laws of the United States permit us to register our views through our voices and our votes,” Pirro said. “What they don’t permit is making your views known through violence, especially violence directed at the president of the United States. This is anti-democratic at its core.”

The annual correspondents’ dinner, held at the Washington Hilton hotel near Dupont Circle, had just begun when Allen stormed the security checkpoints in the hotel lobby around 8:30 p.m. armed with two handguns and a shotgun.

Security officers apprehended Allen around five minutes later after exchanging gunfire when he passed a checkpoint on the floor above the event. A Secret Service agent received only minor injuries in the tumult in part due to a bulletproof vest.

The incident forced the event’s early shutdown and the immediate evacuation of top officials — cutting short a performance by mentalist Oz Pearlman in a role comedians have historically filled at the event — including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Interim D.C. police chief Jeffrey Carroll said Allen had no immediately identifiable criminal history and was not previously known to law enforcement.

CCTV footage from the Hilton hotel shows Allen was apprehended by Secret Service agents near a stairwell that led to a set of doors that open into the ballroom, opposite the stage where the president and other officials were seated.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that Allen was refusing to cooperate with investigators. But interviews with family members and writings recovered from his California home and his hotel room at the Hilton suggested the attack was politically motivated.

“It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche said.

Blanche said a preliminary investigation thus far indicates Allen acted alone and traveled via train from California to Chicago and then to Washington.

Since Saturday, Trump has repeatedly used the shooting as evidence the White House ballroom he’s trying to build in the place of the now-demolished East Wing is imperative to his and the nation’s security.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon previously blocked construction on the ballroom itself, finding little weight behind the president’s argument that it fell into a “safety-and-security exception” that barred the George W. Bush appointee from outright blocking it.

In an April 16 ruling, Leon narrowed his injunction to allow work on a bunker below the ballroom to move forward as the only part of the project necessary for national security.

At a White House press conference following the dinner, Trump said the Hilton was “not a particularly secure building,” and noted his planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom would have bulletproof glass.

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social. “It cannot be built fast enough!”

Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate sent Greg Craig of Foley Hoag, the Washington firm representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Leon’s case, a letter demanding the dismissal of the lawsuit by Monday morning.

“Put simply, your lawsuit puts the lives of the president, his family and his staff at grave risk,” Shumate wrote on Sunday. “I hope yesterday’s narrow miss will help you finally realize the folly of a lawsuit that literally serves no purpose except to stop President Trump no matter the cost.”

Shumate set a 9 a.m. deadline, which has since passed, and vowed to file a motion to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the case.

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