Suspect Charged in White House Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]The accused gunman in the White House correspondents dinner shooting is facing serious federal charges this morning after his first court appearance. The Justice Department charging 31-year-old Cole Allen with one count of attempting to assassinate President Trump and two weapons charges. Prosecutors citing alleged writings by the suspect sent to family members. Make no mistake, this was an attempted assassination of the president of the United States with the defendant making clear what his intent was.

[00:00:31]>> DOJ officials releasing these photos of the weapons they say Allen was carrying, including a 12- gauge shotgun, a pistol, and three knives. According to charging documents, Allen ran past a metal detector located one floor above the ballroom, firing a weapon. A Secret Service officer who was injured returned fire five times, but did not hit Allan, who was eventually detained in the lobby. Authorities say Allen reserved a room at the Washington Hilton for three nights and traveled to DC by train on April 21st from his home in California.

[00:01:02]The acting attorney general says security at the dinner worked as intended.

[00:01:06]>> Law enforcement did not fail. They did exactly what they are trained to do.

[00:01:12]This was the third attempt on President Trump's life in just two years. The White House holding a meeting Monday to discuss possible changes to how the president is protected.

[00:01:21]>> We're always looking for ways to improve security.

[00:01:23]>> New data analyzed by the Wall Street Journal shows domestic attacks and plots against the US government are at their highest levels in at least three decades. The White House press secretary blaming Democrats. The left-wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed. And it almost did so again this weekend.

[00:01:46]>> The top House Democrat responding.

[00:01:48]>> This so-called White House press secretary wants to lecture America and lecture us about civility. Get lost. Clean up your own house.

[00:01:59]The White House is also using this episode as an opportunity to make the case for the president's ballroom project, which they say could more safely handle large events like this.

[00:02:08]Undermining that argument, the correspondence center is a private event, not a White House function, and its attendance is roughly three times the ballroom's planned capacity.

[00:02:17]Savannah.

[00:02:18]>> All right, Garrett, thank you. We want to turn now to NBC's National Law Enforcement and Intelligence correspondent, Tom Winter. So, these charging documents, did they contain any new information? And what more have we learned about how this unfolded?

[00:02:28]>> Yeah. Well, as you know from going through these documents over the years, typically we flip through the first couple of pages and get to the conduct, get to what is new. But actually, it's the very first sentence that really stands out in this charging document, which is the attempt to assassinate the president of the United States. Now, the third attempted assassination of Donald Trump. So, that is new information that they now believe in fact he was targeting them. And there's some information from uh his letter that he left behind, that manifesto that we referenced yesterday talking about how he wanted to start at the highest ranking Trump administration official.

[00:02:58]Well, who's that? Of course, it's the president. We have a timeline now, the train travel timeline, when he booked the hotel, approximately a month after Donald Trump announced that he would be attending this event and taking three or four days to get across the country to DC. The other thing that's included in here, they note that this is a televised event. And I wonder if that's because it started at 8:00. He gets down there at 8:40. If he was watching to know when the president was there and when the president was seated and when this event began. They don't put things in here by accident.

[00:03:28]>> What's what's next, Tom? Where does the investigation go from here? And and what more can you tell us about perhaps why he took the train?

[00:03:35]>> Right. Well, the train component could be because your bags are not checked.

[00:03:39]They don't go through a magnetometer.

[00:03:40]they don't go through the X-ray. So, you may have thought, you know what, this is the path of least resistance. I'm not going to have my bags checked as I make my way to DC, and I can get off that train without having to collect any sort of guns. And of course, DC has very strict uh gun laws. So, that could be a thing. Second, uh thing that they're going to we're going to hear about in the next couple of days, there's going to be a detention hearing. There's no way he's getting bail here, but prosecutors will be able to argue before a judge, so we might get an update on the investigation. And then the third thing is they found the devices. So, I wonder if we're going to find out more about when he started to make the turn that the family talks about, how he started to really get deep in his extreme beliefs. And you remember, we heard the same thing in the Charlie Kirk shooting with Tyler Robinson. So, could that help investigators try to at least let the public know when somebody goes from strong political beliefs, which is not uncommon in this country, to when you might have a concern, when somebody might act out on them.

[00:04:31]>> All right, Tom, thank you very much.

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