D.C

May 15 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Friday that wants to build the National Garden of American Heroes, an exhibit of statues in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C.

Trump posted on social media that the public space would include landscaping and statues of the founding fathers, military soldiers, religious leaders, civil rights figures, athletes, artists and entertainers.

“This magnificent exhibition of statues will be located in West Potomac Park, which we are transforming into one of the World’s most beautiful public spaces,” Trump posted. “Right now, it is a totally BARREN field of Prime Waterfront Real Estate along our Mighty Potomac River.”

The project is the latest of Trump’s announcements to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary. He has said he wants 250 statues included in the garden.

Trump has ordered other projects in Washington, D.C., including renovation of the East Wing of the White House and repainting the basin of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. These projects have drawn criticism over Trump exerting unilateral authority to put them in motion, bypassing congressional approval.

The White House has not clarified whether it will seek congressional approval for the statue garden.

The National Capital Planning Commission and Commission of Fine Arts are typically involved in reviewing projects like this in Washington, D.C.

The newly formed National Garden of American Heroes Foundation is fundraising for the garden project.

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WASHINGTON — The electoral college vote certification was interrupted when supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, capturing the nation’s attention and threatening its democratic process.

The rioters, fueled by Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, breached the building and ran freely through its historic halls before being forced out. The violence resulted in the death of one woman and an emergency district curfew that will last until Thursday morning. Here is how the situation unfolded:

Morning rally near the White House

(Swetha Kannan / Los Angeles Times)

10:53 a.m. Eastern Standard Time: Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani incites the crowd at the “Save America Rally,” saying, “Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines are crooked, the ballots are fraudulent. And if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So … let’s have trial by combat. I am willing to stake my reputation.”

Between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.: Trump supporters continue to gather to protest Congress’ formal counting and certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college win over President Trump.

1:00 p.m.: As Trump speaks at the rally outside the White House, his supporters advance on the Capitol building.

1:02 p.m.: Vice President Mike Pence issues a letter saying he can’t block election results.

1:13 p.m.: Trump ends his speech at the rally with a call to march down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Riots begin

Police in riot gear clear a hallway inside the Capitol.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

Around 1:20 p.m.: Mobs start to form outside the Capitol building, as Trump supporters try to break past police barriers.

2:13 p.m.: The Capitol is locked down, with no entry or exit.

(Swetha Kannan/Los Angeles Times)

2:16 p.m.: Rioters breach the Capitol building, while it is on lockdown.

Violence escalates

2:20 p.m.: Rioters bang on doors at the Capitol and break a window.

2:31 p.m.: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announces curfew for 6 p.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday.

2:47 p.m.: Guards draw their guns in the House chamber.

3:00 p.m.: Rioters storm in and cheer in the Capitol Rotunda.

3:03 p.m.: Rioters are on the Senate floor.

3:13 p.m.: Trump tweets asking for peace at the Capitol.

3:23 p.m.: A woman is shot in the Capitol.

Around 3:50 p.m.: An explosive device is reportedly found at the Republican National Committee building.

(Swetha Kannan/Los Angeles Times)

4:06 p.m.: President-elect Joe Biden makes a speech in Delaware, saying “our democracy is under unprecedented assault.”

President-elect Joe Biden called the violent protests on the U.S. Capitol “an assault on the most sacred of American undertakings: the doing of the people’s business.”

4:18 p.m.: Trump tweets a video repeating his false claims of election fraud and praising his supporters, although he encouraged them to go home. The tweet was later removed by Twitter.

5:34 p.m.: Capitol building is announced as secure.

5:49 p.m.: The woman who was shot is reported dead.

6:00 p.m.: Curfew starts in Washington. Former President George W. Bush issues a statement on the insurrection at the Capitol.

Around 7:00 p.m.: The process begins to resume for Congress to count and announce the electoral college results in favor of Biden.

Before authorities charged him with attempting to assassinate President Trump and top administration officials in a brazen attack at the Washington Hilton, Cole Tomas Allen lived what those who knew him described as a quiet, simple existence.

He worked as a tutor and enjoyed video games, manga and riding his blue scooter. Acquaintances said Allen rarely talked about his political views through much of his adult life.

But on social media, he appears to have expressed concerns about the morality of U.S. policy, particularly its role in the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

Now, those who crossed paths with him are struggling to square the accusations against him with the man they knew as an unassuming student, gamer and teacher.

Allen grew up in a middle-class, suburban part of Torrance, one of four siblings who would each go on to study at reputable universities.

His parents were both teachers and “really solid members of their community,” according to Paul Thompson, a Los Angeles County prosecutor who lives next door to the family’s two-story house. Allen’s father knew many people on the block of single-family homes by their first names, Thompson said, and the suspect’s mother once saved Thompson’s dog when it ran into the road.

As a high school junior, Allen led Pacific Lutheran’s volleyball team in a three-set win over Junipero Serra High School. He was homeschooled, but was allowed via a special program to take a class at Pacific Lutheran in Gardena and to play for its respected squad, according to the private school’s principal.

Allen was “a godly person” who never cursed or shared his political views at the time, a former teammate told The Times, but he was also “very competitive.”

That drive extended to academics. After finishing his homeschooling, he was accepted into Caltech, one of the best universities in the nation for aspiring engineers like Allen.

He joined the Caltech Christian Fellowship, taking on a leadership role in which he organized Bible discussions, as well as the fencing team and the Nerf Club. He interned at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge for three months.

In 2016, he was part of a five-person team that won an annual robotics and design competition in which teams built robots to play in soccer matches at Caltech. Allen was a teaching assistant at the Pasadena school, where he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree the following year.

Elizabeth Terlinden met Allen through the Caltech Christian Fellowship, where she was co-president during the 2014-15 school year.

“Quiet guy, kind of nondescript, generally polite, got good grades,” she told The Times, describing her impression of Allen. “Christian definitely, but that’s because I interacted with him primarily in that context.”

Michael D’Asaro, who coached fencing at Caltech around the time Allen was in college, said that he didn’t remember Allen but that generally none of the students attended practice regularly.

“Those kids were more interested in studying than sports, as you can imagine,” he said in a text message. “They would spend days and nights in the lab.”

After Caltech, Allen went on to work as a mechanical engineer for a South Pasadena firm called IJK Controls.

Kevin Baragona said he and Allen worked together “making stabilized gimbals for Hollywood” at IJK for about six months.

Baragona, who left IJK in January 2018 to found the company DeepAI, said in an interview via FaceTime from rural China that Allen seemed “kind of tired, unmotivated, like he didn’t want to really work hard, and maybe depressed.”

Baragona said that Allen was mainly interested in video games, and that Allen even showed him a couple of games he had made or was working on.

Allen was at IJK for less than a year and a half, according to his LinkedIn profile, which states that he worked as a self-employed “Indie Game Developer” from September 2018 to March 2020.

In 2019, he registered a trademark for an esoteric video game called “Bohrdom,” a “hybrid of a bullet hell and a racing game” based on atomic theory, in which electrons and protons compete. “Bohrdom” languished on the Steam gaming platform. Three other projects Allen detailed in his professional bio remained unfinished.

Then, in March 2020, he took a job as a tutor at C2 Education. In December 2024, he was named teacher of the year at the test preparation and tutoring company in a Spanish-tiled Torrance shopping center. People who knew him through his work there described him in interviews as intelligent and professional.

In May 2025, Allen received a master’s degree from Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, six miles from his parents’ home in Torrance.

Bin Tang, a professor in the university’s computer science department, described Allen as a “very good student. … Soft-spoken, very polite, a good fellow.”

“I am very shocked to see the news,” he told the Associated Press.

Joaquin Miranda knew he recognized the photo circulating online of a man posing in a graduation gown at Cal State Dominguez Hills, but he couldn’t quite place it. So on Monday, the 48-year-old showed the picture to his 13-year-old daughter, who told him it was of Allen, “my tutor guy,” who had tutored her in English at C2.

“She can’t believe it, because he was very nice, very professional and a very cool guy,” Miranda said of his daughter. “So yeah, it’s crazy.”

The Torrance home connected to Cole Tomas Allen.

(Robbin Goddard / Los Angeles Times)

At the heart of the case against Allen is a document federal authorities allege he sent family members.

The writer of the document apologized to his parents, colleagues and others before laying out his “rules of engagement” — guests, hotel security and staff and other people not in elected office or government were “not targets.” The author says he was targeting top Trump administration officials because he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

If the document was indeed written by Allen, Baragona said it would represent a fundamental change from the person he knew when they were making gimbals together at IJK Controls.

“It’s kind of sad, really,” Baragona said of the transformation Allen’s worldview apparently underwent in recent years. “It’s tragic and sad.”

The document was signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” echoing the usernames the FBI in a court filing said Allen used online.

Federal authorities have not identified the specific accounts, but The Times found multiple similarly named social media profiles likely used by Allen, with close variations of the same distinctive username, @coldForce3000, that Allen used on a chess account created with his confirmed email addresses. The accounts have been taken down, but much of their contents remain accessible on the Internet Archive.

Across more than 5,000 posts extending from 2021 to days before last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, where the attack attributed to him took place, Allen’s social media history shows that what started as a singular immersion into the online gaming world became consumed in condemnation of Trump, his administration and war. The rhetoric was often harsh — likening the president to a mob boss or calling him a sociopath — but did not espouse violence.

A sketch of Cole Tomas Allen in court.

(Dana Verkouteren / Associated Press)

For years, SoCal Twitter user @CForce3000, under the name “coldForce,” posted almost exclusively about gaming, and “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” in particular, the same fighting game Allen played competitively as an online brawler.

The account changed abruptly the day after Russia’s April 2023 missile attack on Slovyansk, in eastern Ukraine. Eleven people, including a toddler, died in the shelling of a residential building. The feed from @CForce3000 carried images of the bloodshed.

Subsequent Ukraine-related posts followed, along with pleas for donations to buy jeeps, equipment and supplies for combatants in the country. By early 2024, the account had broadened to domestic concerns, including opinions on student activism at Columbia University in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

“Everyone makes mistakes in college,” @CForce3000 wrote in May 2024, criticizing the activists, who risked expulsion. “Burning down your parents’ life accomplishments and your own future to demonstrably degrade the image of your (presumably) recent cause is not really one I’d recommend,” the user posted, “like, my parents woulda *buried* me if i picked this as a ‘hill to die on.’”

For the next year, @CForce3000 shared hundreds of posts from sources as diverse as Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and former Ukrainian diplomat Maria Drutska. The account became a repeater of condemnations by Trump critics calling the president an ally of Russia and decrying his failure to support Ukraine and his involvement with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In November 2024, @CForce3000 announced the account was migrating to BlueSky, saying of X, “I don’t think there’s much reason to be on here anymore.” In early 2025 on BlueSky, coldForce chose an avatar plucked from the anime series “Gintama”: the heroine Kagura in her berserk state, insane with rage.

“Hi! I’m a random Californian guy with posts about American politics, support for Ukraine, and observations of small creatures,” read the new coldForce account bio. “I choose my own battlefields. Not through my blood, but with my heart. I stand on the battlefield to protect what I want.”

The BlueSky user continued to forward requests for donations to equip Ukrainian troops. It decried federal immigration raids and posted about a toddler who nearly died at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Texas. In reposting a feed that called Elon Musk a white supremacist, coldForce mused that the Tesla CEO and X owner was a “genius with effective(?) autism” struggling to understand humanity.

The rhetoric sharpened this spring when Trump began posting threats to bomb Iran, saying that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” On BlueSky, coldForce shared posts from Democratic pundits and leaders, including in Congress, who called for Trump’s impeachment, and those who described the president as “deranged” and “a sociopathic mob boss.”

Cole Allen reportedly purchased a handgun at CAP Tactical Firearms in Lawndale.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

“Trump must be removed from office. He has no capacity to do the job, and he’s destroying the US and the world with incoherent flailing,” read an April 12 message by Minnesota liberal activist Will Stancil that coldForce reposted. “He thinks he can bully and blackmail the whole world and will start WW3 or nuke someone eventually. He absolutely cannot [be] allowed to continue.”

To these, coldForce added:

“If we can call for russians to oppose putin, we can and must oppose trump no less.”

On April 6, federal authorities say Allen used his phone to search “white house correspondents dinner 2026” and booked a room at the Washington Hilton.

Allen allegedly traveled by train across the country from California, arriving in Washington, D.C., on April 23 and checking into his room at the Washington Hilton, where the White House correspondents’ dinner was scheduled two nights later.

At 8:03 p.m. April 25, he snapped a mirror selfie in his hotel room, according to a pretrial detention memo filed by prosecutors Wednesday. He looked into the camera, eyebrows raised with a hint of a smile. Allen wore a black dress shirt and slacks, a red tie tucked into his pants and a small leather bag prosecutors say was filled with ammunition. He also allegedly wore a shoulder holster and knife in his waistband.

At 8:27 p.m., he pulled up a live feed of Trump en route to the event. Minutes later, as the president sat on an open stage during the fete, Allen allegedly ran through a magnetometer and past Secret Service agents toward the ballroom before firing at least one shotgun round in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom, the memo said.

Secret Service agents respond during the White House correspondents’ dinner.

(Tom Brenner / Associated Press)

A Secret Service officer saw him and fired five shots — all of which missed him — and Allen fell to the ground and was arrested before he could reach the event space. The Department of Justice has said it is investigating whether Allen fired the round that hit one of the agents in the chest; the agent avoided major injuries because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

People who knew Allen before he was accused of attempting to gun down American leaders told The Times that they never would have thought he was capable of such a violent act.

Terlinden, of the Caltech Christian Fellowship, said she and Allen once got into a heated argument over how to spend the group’s charity money. He advocated for sending toys to children abroad through an organization that was explicitly Christian, whereas Terlinden pushed to feed the homeless locally, which she thought was more pragmatic.

“I think he said it’s not about helping people, it’s about showing the love of Christ,” she recalled. “After I talked about efficiency and helping people.”

She left the room and didn’t return.

“Part of the reason I’m bringing that up is to demonstrate that that’s the most scandalous incident I could come up with,” Terlinden said. “We were arguing over whether we should send toys to poor children or feed homeless people — that’s the big tea.”

Reflecting on the allegations, she said she wondered whether Allen was “acting out of perceived moral duty. … In a twisted way, there is a sense of, you know, standing up for people that can’t defend themselves.”

According to Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and other top administration officials, the U.S. Secret Service did a fine job protecting President Trump and Cabinet members from the gunman who breached the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner Saturday.

“That horrible act was stopped because of the courage and professionalism of law enforcement — the officers who responded without hesitation and did their jobs as they were trained to do,” Blanche said Monday.

However, according to a detailed accounting filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors in the criminal case against suspect Cole Tomas Allen, the performance of the nation’s preeminent protection agency was marred by inattentiveness and misfires and saved by “extraordinary good fortune” and the gunman falling to the ground.

“The defendant, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol, two knives, four daggers, and enough ammunition to take dozens of lives, was apprehended by [Secret Service] officers mere feet away from the ballroom where his primary target was located, along with other members of the Cabinet,” prosecutors wrote Wednesday, in a filing arguing for Allen to be held in detention pending trial on one charge of trying to kill the president and two firearms charges.

Contradicting a prior claim by Blanche that officers had “promptly tackled and detained” Allen, prosecutors wrote that the 31-year-old tutor from Torrance simply “fell to the ground” after blowing past a team of agents just two open flights of stairs from the ballroom.

They wrote that one officer fired at Allen five times, but never hit him.

The same officer saw Allen fire his shotgun “in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom,” prosecutors wrote, and officers later discovered “one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube.”

Prosecutors said nothing about the Secret Service officer who Blanche said was shot in his ballistic vest during the incident — adding to speculation that the officer may have been shot not by Allen, but by a fellow officer, or not at all.

Agency critiqued before

In all, the court filing brought further into focus a chaotic Secret Service response that appeared flawed from the start, including in a video Trump posted shortly after the incident in which agents appeared to be idling around an unobstructed entrance when Allen ran past them.

It added to concerns that law enforcement, security experts and members of Congress had raised about the performance of an agency that has been repeatedly called on to improve after previous attempts on Trump’s life. At a 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., a gunman fired a bullet that grazed Trump’s ear, and that same year, another assailant prepared to shoot him from the unsecured perimeter of a Florida golf course.

Robert D’Amico, a former FBI deputy chief of operations for hostage rescue teams who is now a security consultant, said the security failures he saw in the Secret Service’s preparation for Saturday’s dinner — including its failure to set up basic barriers to prevent people from sprinting into the secured area — were stunning, especially given the past threats and the fact the nation is at war with Iran.

“It’s for a person like Trump, who’s had two assassination attempts before and is at war with Iran, which has terrorist training and proxies up, and you still don’t have the basics?” D’Amico said. “It’s unfathomable.”

Other concerns have been voiced by members of Congress, including Republicans.

The House Oversight Committee has requested a briefing from the Secret Service, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which also investigated the Butler incident.

In a letter urging the hearing, Hawley said the latest incident “raises questions about presidential security arrangements, potential resource needs, and the degree to which reforms previously proposed by Congress have been adopted.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News that from “a layman’s perspective,” event security “looked a little lax in terms of getting into the building,” and that it “doesn’t sound like it was sufficient.”

Sean M. Curran, director of the Secret Service, has been on Capitol Hill in recent days briefing lawmakers.

He told CBS News that agents did a “great job,” but also that the incident remains under review. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would be leading discussions on potential updates to Secret Service plans for securing the president.

Fear of graver threats

Blanche has argued that proof of the Secret Service’s effectiveness at the press gala was in the result: Allen was stopped, Trump and other officials were unharmed and no one was killed, despite Allen’s alleged intent.

However, the concerns being raised have to do with the vulnerabilities that were exposed as much as those that were exploited.

Because the dinner was not designated a major “national special security event” — such as a political convention — there were no trained counterassault agents on standby to prevent a breach or to take down a person with a weapon, officials have said.

Law enforcement experts said that was clearly a mistake given so many top officials — Trump, Johnson, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others — were in the room.

Such a gathering could have been targeted by foreign adversaries or others with far more experience, less regard for human life and much greater firepower than Allen, experts said.

“Most of my military friends are all saying the same thing,” said D’Amico, who is also a former infantry platoon commander in the U.S. Marines. “If you had had a team of three or four [gunmen], they would have gotten to [Trump].’”

In the initial criminal complaint against Allen, prosecutors included the text of an email Allen sent to family just as he was preparing to rush the security perimeter, in which he allegedly wrote that he had chosen to use buckshot in order to “minimize casualties” and prevent bystanders from being wounded by more powerful bullets penetrating walls.

He also allegedly wrote that he was willing to “go through most everyone” at the event to get to top administration officials, but that guests and hotel staff were “not targets at all.”

In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors describe Allen’s actions as “premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death,” and say he was “laden with weapons” as he breached security. But none of those weapons included assault-style rifles that can fire multiple bullets rapidly and have been used to kill civilians in mass shootings across the country for years.

The filing described Allen — a Caltech graduate and high school tutor — not as some trained tactical expert, but as an ideologue who spent part of his Amtrak journey from California to Washington waxing poetic about the landscape around him, describing Pennsylvania’s woods as “vast fairy lands filled with tiny trickling creeks in spring.”

Could have been worse

D’Amico said he and other Marines learned early on in Iraq that entrances to secured locations have to be designed in a “serpentine” fashion, forcing anyone approaching to move more slowly through the area and giving security officers more time to assess their intentions. And at an event the size of the correspondents’ dinner, with so many top officials gathered in a public hotel, you would want to make entrances “even more difficult.”

And yet no barriers seemed to be in place at the event, he said — something anyone trained more than Allen could have capitalized on.

“If they just had come through in a team of three or four who were coordinated and trained, there absolutely would have been penetration into the ballroom,” D’Amico said. “It would have been a gunfight.”

Allen himself questioned the security at the event, according to court records, allegedly writing that he had walked into the Washington Hilton with multiple weapons and no one considered “the possibility that I could be a threat.”

He wrote that if he “was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen,” he “could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed” — referring to a powerful machine gun.

“It is fortunate he was only armed with what he had,” said Ed Obayashi, a California law enforcement expert on use of force.

WASHINGTON — Directly outside the Washington Hilton ballroom, as the yearly White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner got underway Saturday, a Times reporter had just entered the men’s room when he heard a handful of loud pops ring out.

“Shooter!” someone shouted. “Get down! Shots fired!”

Inside the ballroom, thousands of journalists and politicians began to duck for cover as the event devolved from a celebration of free speech to a scene of fear.

The Times had six reporters at the dinner, seated at a table near the right side of the stage.

The Times reporter in the restroom, Gavin Quinton, heard the gunfire around 8:30 p.m. He had left The Times’ table minutes earlier, moving past the TV cameras and up toward the raised terrace near the ballroom’s security entrance. He crossed paths with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

Outside the restroom, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, had broken into a sprint through the metal detectors, security footage would later show, getting within feet of the ballroom entrance.

Five or six shots fired by Secret Service agents missed Allen before agents brought him down near a staircase leading to the main floor, where Trump sat prominently in view.

A federal agent was hit in the chest in the exchange of gunfire but was wearing a bullet-proof vest and not seriously injured.

Inside the restroom, Quinton crouched near a corner. Others rushed into the room, including three hotel security guards who flung themselves in so quickly their backs slammed against the tiled wall. Within moments, a Secret Service agent positioned himself at the bathroom entrance, his pistol drawn.

“Head count?” he asked.

“A dozen — no, 15!” someone shouted back.

People stayed locked in bathroom stalls. Some tried to overcome the poor cellphone service to call loved ones. Confused, the mix of tuxedo-clad attendees, uniformed hotel guards and waitstaff tried to piece together what had happened.

“He had a gun,” one of the hotel guards said.

Another witness told Quinton that he initially thought Blitzer had been the shooter’s target.

“I look around and I hear shots as I’m opening the door. And I turn and I see him,” the man said of the gunman. “I look again and I’m like, ‘Oh, they just shot someone.’ ”

Blitzer, who was tackled to the floor by officers during the incident, would later say that “the first thing that went through my mind was whether he was going to shoot me.”

As the group speculated over whether the shooter had died in the volley, one man wondered aloud whether the event would continue. Initially thinking the gunman must have been killed, Quinton replied no.

“Why not?” the man asked. “It’s a bad guy who’s dead. It was a good f— ending. Seriously.”

The Washington Hilton has hosted the annual correspondents’ dinner for decades. The event, referred to locally as “Nerd Prom,” now comes with a slate of pre-parties and after-parties.

This was the president’s first appearance at the dinner since 2015; he had skipped it during his entire first term.

Questions now surround the security protocols. Guests faced little screening to enter the hotel on Saturday — a quick flash of a paper ticket — before heading down escalators to the only area with magnetometers, where bags were also searched.

Trump had entered the ballroom at 8:15 p.m. as the Marine band played “Hail to the Chief.”

Twenty minutes later, videos show, Secret Service officers with ballistic vests and long guns barked instructions to clear a path as they rushed into the ballroom and onto the stage.

One agent pulled Vice President JD Vance away. Another escorted Trump, who appeared to trip, but later explained he had been urged to drop to the floor.

Other officials — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller — were quickly whisked away too.

At The Times’ table in the ballroom, nothing appeared amiss at first.

Waiters had just begun to clear plates of spring pea and burrata salad. The reporters did not hear the gunshots, but watched as the room fell silent and others began to drop from their seats and duck under the floor-length white tablecloths.

One reporter lost a shoe in the process and then feared a gunman would spot it. She dragged it under the table.

They stayed in place for several minutes, texting loved ones and waiting for an all-clear, but none came.

From under the tablecloth, reporters heard someone yell out, “God bless America! USA!” They feared that was the shooter.

It turned out to be Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff. The chant did not catch on.

Eventually, others could be heard speaking loudly and dishes clanking. Guests began to peek out from under their tables and warily stand up. Uneasy laughter flickered about the ballroom.

Cellphone service inside the ballroom was spotty. There was confusion at first about whether a shooting had occurred or whether plates dropping to the floor had been mistaken for gunshots.

“I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump said later.

Just before 9 p.m., Weijia Jiang, a senior White House correspondent for CBS News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Assn., told guests the program would “resume momentarily.”

A half hour later, Jiang returned to the stage and announced that law enforcement had requested guests leave the premises. She said Trump had told her no one was hurt and that he, the first lady and members of the Cabinet were safe.

In closing remarks, Jiang said journalism is a public service “because when there is an emergency, we run to the crisis — not away from it.”

“And on a night when we are thinking about the freedoms of the 1st Amendment, we must also think about how fragile they are,” she said. “I saw all of you reporting, and that’s what we do.”

Law enforcement and media leaders offered conflicting guidance. Quinton was among the first to evacuate the building, though the vast majority of guests waited inside for longer.

On his way out, he noticed a metal detector had already partially been dismantled when the shooter ran through.

Quinton passed the grounded shooter, restrained on his stomach, near the staircase just 20 or so feet from the bathroom entrance. He lifted his phone and recorded a brief, shaky video of the scene before security forced him out of the hotel and onto the street.

The entire spectrum of emotion was on display when security finally ordered everyone to evacuate. Women in gowns ran in fear. One man sobbed into the sleeves of his evening jacket.

Photos on social media showed others stopping to take selfies. Some drank wine straight form the bottle.

Quinton spotted the presidential motorcade outside of the hotel lobby at about 8:45 p.m. Around the same time, an ambulance arrived as about 100 event attendees were escorted out of the secured event perimeter.

More law enforcement was inside the hotel as guests exited the building, including agents from the Secret Service, ATF, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. National Guard soldiers replaced celebrities and politicians at the red carpet entrance.

Outside, Metropolitan police ushered people north on Columbia Road NW. Hungry guests in tuxedos filed into a nearby 7-Eleven. The dinner’s main course — prime beef and Maine lobster — had not been served.

At the White House afterward, Trump said the event would be rescheduled.

“We’re not going to let anybody take over our society,” he told reporters who had rushed to the news conference still dressed in gowns and black tie. “We’re not going to cancel things out because we can’t do that.”

Meanwhile, the night’s after-parties continued, though organizers attempted a more somber tone. MS NOW, for instance, told those who had RSVP’d that their “Democracy After Hours” party would be a “space for friends and colleagues to be together.”

Independent journalist Tara Palmeri posted a photo on the social media site X of a full party with blue mood lighting.

“People were still partying, still hitting WHCD afterparties last night,” she wrote. “Epstein corruption, an escalating Iran conflict, and an active shooter— and Washington just… kept going. The cognitive dissonance is the system.”

On Sunday morning, the Washington Hilton appeared back to normal, except for the presence of journalists using the hotel as a backdrop for their live shots.

Cole Tomas Allen, the suspected gunman who rattled the nation’s top leaders by exchanging gunfire with federal authorities after racing through the secure perimeter of a press gala in Washington late Saturday, had made a long journey from Southern California and written a “manifesto” threatening Trump administration officials before the short-lived attack, officials said.

Allen, a 31-year-old Caltech graduate and high school tutor from Torrance, is believed to have taken a train first to Chicago and then on to D.C. before checking into the Washington Hilton with two guns he had previously purchased, authorities said.

The attacker managed to bypass several layers of security at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner before being taken down by armed agents outside the ballroom where President Trump and an array of other top federal officials were seated.

Allen could not be reached for comment, nor could an attorney for him be identified as of Sunday.

According to Trump, Allen had also authored a “manifesto” prior to the attack, which he had shared with family and which his brother had flagged to local law enforcement in Connecticut. The New York Post reported that Allen described himself in the document as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and revealed he intended to kill Trump administration officials.

New London (Conn.) Police Deputy Chief John Perry said that around 10:30 p.m. a man came into the lobby of the agency’s headquarters to report that he’d received a troubling email from Allen. The relative initially thought it was spam, but then saw the news of what unfolded in D.C. and felt he needed to report it.

Perry would not say what was in the email, and did not know exactly what time it was sent. But the relative said he only saw and opened it around 10 p.m. “I think he was watching what was going on and kind of put two and two together and said I need to go to my local PD,” Perry said.

Police officials provided the email to the Secret Service and FBI, he said. Trump said the document would be released, but it had not been as of Sunday. Officials said criminal charges against the suspect were pending, with an initial court appearance likely Monday.

Late Saturday, both local and federal law enforcement, including from the FBI, swarmed the Torrance neighborhood where Allen is believed to have lived in a home with his family, with Torrance police clearing the road and putting up police tape along part of the street. A man who responded to a knock on the front door said, “Not right now,” and declined to comment further.

The thwarted attack marked the latest in a string of incidents in which gunmen have gotten dangerously close to Trump, renewing questions about the safety and security of the nation’s commander in chief at a time of intense political division at home and roiling conflicts abroad.

Trump was grazed on the ear by a bullet at one of his presidential campaign events in Butler, Pa., in 2024 — the first of two attempts on his life during that campaign cycle. The other involved a gunman targeting the president as he golfed in Florida, before federal agents intervened. Earlier this year, a gunman was killed at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club, after breaching a security perimeter.

On Sunday, questions swirled as to how such a security lapse could have happened again — and whether large, high-profile events are safe for top officials in a nation where firearms are easy to obtain and ubiquitous.

Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, in an interview on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, said federal authorities believe the suspect had set out alone “to target folks that work in the administration, likely including the president,” but that a motive was still being determined and evidence still being gathered — including from devices taken from Allen and in interviews with people who know him.

“As of now, we don’t have any connection to any particular policy directive of President Trump or Iran or anything else that we’re doing in this country, but we are looking into it,” he said.

Blanche also downplayed the threat posed to Trump, other officials in the room such as Vice President JD Vance and First Lady Melania Trump, and the hundreds of other attendees to the annual event — suggesting Allen had essentially been stopped in his tracks shortly after making his break through a checkpoint of metal detectors and federal agents, dramatic video of which Trump posted online.

“Let’s not forget that the suspect didn’t get very far. He barely broke the perimeter,” Blanche said. “And so while this was extraordinarily dangerous and put a lot of lives at risk and there’s no doubt that that’s something that we’re going to have to learn from over the next couple weeks, the system worked. We were safe, President Trump was safe. His Secret Service agents kept him safe. All of us were safe.”

Blanche’s assessment of the attacker’s breach past security — which he said was only “by a few feet” — was disputed by some.

According to other attendees, including Times journalists, event staff were checking tickets, though not very thoroughly, at multiple points prior to escalators that descended to the metal detectors where Allen allegedly dashed past armed security.

The detectors were right outside the event hall and where the bathrooms for the event were located, and the assailant was taken to the ground about 10 to 15 feet beyond them, attendees said. The shots — including two from the gunman, according to Blanche — were heard in the ballroom.

Allen, who graduated from Caltech in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering and is registered to vote with no party preference, made a $25 political contribution earmarked for then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign challenging Trump for the presidency in 2024.

While at Caltech, he was a teaching assistant and a member of the school’s Christian fellowship and the Nerf club, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later studied computer science as a post-graduate student at CSU-Dominguez Hills.

Allen was named teacher of the month in December 2024 at C2 Education, which specializes in college test preparation, tutoring and academic advising. A representative for C2 Education was not immediately available for comment.

According to the New York Post, Allen himself had derided the event security in his writings beforehand, describing finding far less security at the hotel than he had expected when he arrived, armed, to check in.

“I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing. No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event,” he wrote, according to the Post. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”

Authorities did not detail Allen’s alleged travel route to D.C., other than to say it was by train. In response to questions about whether Allen had taken Amtrak to get to Washington and whether his luggage would have undergone any security screening, Amtrak said only that it is cooperating with federal authorities.

Trump also zeroed in on security at the hotel being inadequate, in addition to posting the video of the suspect rushing past security and multiple pictures of him detained on the floor of the hotel.

While praising the federal agents who took the attacker down, Trump suggested that events with top U.S. officials should be held in more secure facilities — such as the giant ballroom he is trying to build on the White House grounds after demolishing the former East Wing.

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on social media Sunday. “This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!”

Weijia Jiang, president of the correspondents’ association, said in a statement Sunday that the group’s board “will be meeting to assess what happened and determine how to proceed.” She also thanked the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement for keeping people safe, and praised journalists in the room for leaping to work to inform the public of what had occurred.

Times staff writers Richard Winton, Ben Wieder and Justine McDaniel contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A man who stole a purse from then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she dined at a restaurant under the protection of Secret Service agents was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison for a string of thefts in the nation’s capital.

Mario Bustamante Leiva did not recognize Noem when he grabbed her Gucci handbag from the floor of a restaurant where she was eating with her family in April 2025, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Noem’s purse had credit cards and about $3,000 in cash. Police recovered it from Leiva’s motel room.

Bustamante Leiva, a 50-year-old native of Chile, is facing deportation after his sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden.

“Bustamante Leiva came to Washington illegally to prey on citizens of the district,” said Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in a statement. “His pattern of theft ends here.”

Noem, who is identified only by her initials in court filings, acknowledged the incident in a statement last year that referred to Bustamante Leiva as a “a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years.”

He pleaded guilty in November to three counts of wire fraud and one count of first-degree theft. He was charged and convicted of robbing two other people and charging fraudulent purchases to their credit cards.

Bustamante Leiva was charged along with a second suspect, Cristian Montecino-Sananza, who was sentenced in March to 13 months of incarceration for his role in one of the other thefts.

Investigators said they identified Bustamante Leiva as a suspect in the thefts after he used a stolen gift card to make a purchase.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has subpoenaed several witnesses to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington as part of its investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, three people familiar with the matter said Monday.

The subpoenas were issued in recent days and represent an effort by the Justice Department to press forward with the investigation even as a Florida-based career prosecutor who’d been helping lead the inquiry left the case after expressing doubts about the legal viability of a potential prosecution.

A former Justice Department lawyer who served as a top prosecutor in the 1980s and later supported legal efforts by President Trump to overturn his 2020 election loss has since been sworn in to serve as a special counselor to the attorney general, and is expected to work on the investigation.

The months-old Brennan investigation is one of several criminal probes the Justice Department has opened over the last year against Trump’s perceived adversaries. It centers on one of the Republican president’s chief grievances — a U.S. intelligence community finding that Russia interfered on his behalf during his successful 2016 presidential campaign.

The subpoenas were described by people with knowledge of them who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. At least three were said to have been issued, said two of the people. CBS News earlier reported the issuance of subpoenas.

Brennan served as CIA director under President Obama and was in that role when the intelligence community in January 2017 published an assessment detailing Russian interference aimed at helping Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. An investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III concluded that Russia meddled on Trump’s behalf and that his campaign welcomed the assistance, but it did not find sufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy.

The Justice Department last year received a criminal referral from Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, alleging that Brennan made false statements before the panel in 2023 about the preparation of the intelligence community assessment. Brennan and his lawyers have vigorously denied any wrongdoing.

The investigation has been unfolding for months in Florida, with investigators having lined up interviews and issued subpoenas for records. The latest subpoenas seek grand jury testimony in Washington, an indication that prosecutors expect they would have to bring any criminal case in Washington since that is where Brennan’s testimony took place.

On Friday, it was revealed that a key national security prosecutor in Florida who’d been handling the investigation, Maria Medetis Long, left the case. She expressed doubts about the case and was removed, another person familiar with the matter said.

The Justice Department since then has tapped Joseph diGenova, 81, a Trump loyalist who served as the U.S. attorney in Washington for part of the 1980s, to serve as a special counselor to the attorney general. He was sworn in Monday in Florida and is expected to work on the Brennan investigation.

DiGenova supported Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He made headlines that year when he said Chris Krebs, a top Trump administration cybersecurity official who said the election was not tainted by fraud, should be killed. DiGenova later apologized and a lawsuit filed against him by Krebs was withdrawn.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.