Cole Allen charged with attempted assassination of Trump

[00:00:00]Tonight, Cole Allen is officially charged with the attempted assassination of President Trump.

[00:00:05]>> Okay, Fox 5's Linda Schmidt's here now and Linda, prosecutors unveiled a chilling paper trail of grievances from the suspect today. That's right. First of all, this is breaking news here today at 5:00 and uh there is new information that is coming out as Steve was just talking about here. Uh first of all, I want to tell you this. This is the third major assassination attempt against President Trump in 2 years. The shooting suspect is a highly educated tutor for high school students and today in court, he told the judge he has a master's degree. He was charged with attempting to assassinate the president.

[00:00:37]31-year-old Cole Allen now faces up to life in prison for that charge. In addition, Allen has been charged with transporting a firearm across state lines, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and discharge of a firearm, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. The Justice Department says Allen, who lives in California, traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then on to Washington, D.C. Now, the White House Correspondents Dinner was being held at the Hilton Hotel. Authorities say he checked himself into that hotel as a guest about 3:00 Friday afternoon. This whole chaotic scene happened about 24 hours later, just over 24 hours later on Saturday night. The president, vice president and others were rushed off the stage. Many others in that room had to dive for cover. Authorities say he was armed with guns and knives as he charged past a security uh barricade and fired his gun. A Secret Service agent fired five shots and that agent was hit by a bullet. His bulletproof vest saved him.

[00:01:43]That agent was hospitalized and then later released, but right now investigators are trying to determine if the agent was hit by the suspect or possibly by another member of law enforcement. Now, all of this happened on the floor above the ballroom where the dinner was taking place. And take a look at this right here. These are photos of the guns and the knives the Justice Department says Allen had with him.

[00:02:10]These are the weapons that the defendant had on his person. You can see that's a 12-gauge pump action Mossberg shotgun, the.38 semi-automatic. He had at least three knives and all kinds of paraphernalia.

[00:02:25]So, any suggestion that he wasn't there to do harm is absurd. This was an attempted assassination of the president of the United States with the defendant making clear what his intent was and that intent was to bring down as many of the high-ranking cabinet officials as he could.

[00:02:48]Now, authorities say Allen sent a note to several of his family members just minutes before the attack and he referred to himself as quote the friendly federal assassin and he railed against Trump administration policies including US strikes on drug smuggling boats. Now, today he did not enter a plea in court. He is scheduled for another court appearance next week.

[00:03:08]That's supposed to happen uh next Thursday. All right. Thanks, Linda.