The United States Department of Justice filed three federal charges against Cole Thomas Allen on Monday, the man who opened fire during the Annual White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25 at the Washington Hilton hotel in the U.S. capital, as announced by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The charges are: attempted assassination of the President of the United States, punishable by up to life imprisonment; interstate transportation of a firearm to commit a felony, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison; and discharge of a firearm during a violent crime, with a mandatory minimum of 10 consecutive years to any other sentence and a maximum of life imprisonment.
Blanche detailed the timeline of the case: Allen, a 31-year-old resident of Torrance, California, booked a room at the Washington Hilton from April 24 to April 26.
On April 21, he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then to Washington D.C., where he arrived on April 24 at noon and checked into the hotel.
On the night of April 25, around 8:40 p.m., Allen approached a security checkpoint on the terrace level of the hotel —one floor above the hall where dinner was being held— and ran through the magnetometer carrying a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.
"A Secret Service agent was shot in the chest, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest that worked," Blanche stated.
The agent survived thanks to his bulletproof vest, and Allen was neutralized and apprehended before entering the main hall, where around 2,600 people were gathered, including President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.
About 10 minutes before the attack, Allen sent his family a manifesto of approximately 1,000 words, signed as "Cole 'cold face' 'friendly federal killer' Allen."
In the document, he identified as targets "administration officials, prioritized from the highest to the lowest rank."
His brother, a resident of New London, Connecticut, alerted the police after receiving the text.
The Secret Service issued a statement regarding the incident and the FBI, under the leadership of Kash Patel, took over the federal investigation, executing searches at Allen's hotel room and his residence in California.
The federal prosecutor Jeanine Pirro firmly warned after the charges: "Let this be a message to anyone who thinks that Washington D.C. is the place to carry out political violence.
The Constitution and the laws of the United States allow us to express our opinions with our voice and our vote.
"What they do not allow is to enforce them through violence, especially that directed against the president. This is fundamentally undemocratic."
Allen, a Caltech graduate in mechanical engineering with a master's degree in computer science, appeared before a federal court this Monday with no prior criminal record, as stated by his public defenders.
Trump stood firm after the shooting and released the security video of the alleged shooter hours after the incident.
A detention hearing has been scheduled for Thursday, April 30, at 11 a.m. in Washington D.C., where it will be determined whether Allen remains in custody while the judicial process moves forward.
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