WASHINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) — Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in Saturday night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, was charged on Monday with attempting to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump.
On Monday, Allen made his first court appearance at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia since the shooting.
He was charged with three criminal counts, namely, attempting to assassinate the president, interstate transportation of weapons, and discharge of a firearm during a violent crime.
The prosecutor said Allen had a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol, and was also carrying with him three knives and other dangerous paraphernalia when he was arrested, CNBC reported.
According to law enforcement authorities, Allen, 31, traveled from California to Washington, D.C. by train and checked into the Washington Hilton hotel with weapons before the attack.
“On April 21 of this year, he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then from Chicago to Washington, D.C. On April 24, he arrived in Washington, D.C. at approximately one o’clock in the afternoon and checked into the Washington Hilton,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference Monday afternoon.
“Approximately at 8:40 on the night of April 25, Allen approached the security checkpoint on the terrace level of the hotel, which is again a floor above where the dinner was taking place. He ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun,” Blanche continued.
The acting attorney general also noted that the investigation is ongoing. “It’s not complete. A lot of the information that the media is hearing through leaks or sources, some of it is true, some of it is not true,” he said.
Allen reportedly sent an email to his relatives shortly before the shooting, in which he wrote that Trump administration officials were “targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”
He also wrote: “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
Live footage of the event showed that the suspect attempted to rush a security checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement, injuring a U.S. Secret Service officer.
Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and all Cabinet members were evacuated from the dinner after the shooting. Attendees were seen on the live broadcast ducking around their tables and taking cover.
Shortly after the security incident, U.S. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi wrote on X that the agency was investigating “a shooting incident near the main magnetometer screening area” at the dinner, in coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department.
Political violence has been frequent in the United States in recent years. Trump has been the target of multiple assassination attempts and death threats during both his presidential campaign and his time in office.
The most prominent example is the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which he narrowly survived while campaigning for president. ■
