white house correspondent

WASHINGTON — A man accused of storming the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner while armed with guns and knives pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that he attempted to kill President Trump and fired a shotgun at a Secret Service officer who tried to stop the attack.

Cole Tomas Allen was handcuffed and shackled and wearing an orange jail uniform when he appeared in federal court for his arraignment. Allen didn’t speak during the brief hearing. One of his attorneys entered the plea on his behalf.

Allen’s lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden to disqualify at least two top Justice Department officials from direct involvement in prosecuting him because they could be considered victims or witnesses in the case, creating a potential conflict of interest.

Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro were attending the event when Allen ran through a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun at a Secret Service officer, authorities said. In a court filing last week, Allen’s attorneys argued that it creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest for Blanche and Pirro to be making any prosecutorial decisions in the case.

McFadden, a Trump nominee, didn’t rule from the bench on that question but asked Allen’s attorneys to elaborate on the possible scope of their recusal request. Defense attorney Eugene Ohm said the defense likely would seek to disqualify Pirro’s entire office from involvement in the case. Ohm acknowledged that a bid to disqualify the entire Justice Department would be unlikely.

“That would be quite a request,” the judge said.

McFadden gave prosecutors until May 22 to respond in writing to the defense’s request. The judge asked the government to specify whether it believes Pirro and Blanche could be considered victims in the case.

“That might add some clarity here,” McFadden said.

In their filing, Allen’s attorneys suggested that the appointment of a special prosecutor might be warranted.

Allen is scheduled to return to court on June 29.

A Secret Service officer was shot once in a bullet-resistant vest during the April 25 attack at the Washington Hilton hotel, which disrupted and ultimately prompted an early end to one of the highest-profile annual events in the nation’s capital. The officer fired five shots but didn’t hit anybody, authorities said.

Allen, 31, of Torrance, was injured but was not shot.

Besides the attempted-assassination count, Allen also is charged with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and two additional firearms counts. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the attempted assassination charge alone.

Allen was placed on suicide watch after his arrest, but jail officials removed him from that status after several days. Allen’s attorneys complained that he had been unnecessarily confined in a padded room with constant lighting, repeatedly strip searched and placed in restraints outside his cell.

Allen told FBI agents that he didn’t expect to survive the attack, which could help explain why he was deemed to be a possible suicide risk, a Justice Department prosecutor has said.

Allen was outfitted with an ammunition bag, a shoulder gun holster and a sheathed knife when he took a photo of himself in his room at the hotel just minutes before the attack, according to prosecutors. In a message that authorities say sheds light on his motive, Allen referred to himself as a “Friendly Federal Assassin” and alluded obliquely to grievances over a range of actions by Trump’s Republican administration.

Authorities have alleged that Allen on April 6 reserved a room for himself at the Hilton where the event would be held weeks later under its typical tight security. He traveled by train cross-country from California, checking himself into the hotel a day before the dinner with a room reserved for the weekend.

Trump was rushed off the stage by his security team at the Saturday night event and appeared at the White House two hours later, still in his tuxedo, to talk about the attack and the suspect.

“When you’re impactful, they go after you. When you’re not impactful, they leave you alone,” the president said. “They seem to think he was a lone wolf.”

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A man charged with attacking the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner is seeking to disqualify top Justice Department officials from direct involvement in prosecuting him because they could be considered victims or witnesses in the case, creating a potential conflict of interest.

Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro were attending the April 25 event at the Washington Hilton when Cole Tomas Allen allegedly ran through a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun at a Secret Service officer.

In a court filing late Thursday, Allen’s attorneys argued that it creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest for Blanche and Pirro to be making any prosecutorial decisions in the case.

“As this case proceeds closer to trial, the country and the world will continue to wonder — how can the American justice system permit a victim to prosecute a criminal defendant in a case involving them?” defense attorneys Eugene Ohm and Tezira Abe wrote.

Ohm and Abe, who are assistant federal public defenders, suggested that the appointment of a special prosecutor might be warranted. They urged U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee assigned to Allen’s case, to disqualify Pirro, Blanche and possibly other Justice Department officials from direct involvement in the investigation and prosecution.

“Both heard gunshots, which presumably forced them to duck below the tables with the rest of the occupants. They were quickly evacuated. Shortly thereafter, they learned that law enforcement believed the target was certain administration officials,” Ohm and Abe wrote.

Pirro said her office will respond to the defense lawyers’ arguments in its own court filing.

“We will not tolerate people who come to the District of Columbia to engage in antidemocratic acts of political violence; and we will prosecute all such acts to the fullest extent of the law,” Pirro said in a statement.

Allen is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on charges in an indictment handed up Tuesday by a grand jury in Washington.

The charges include attempting to assassinate President Trump, who is a longtime friend of Pirro’s. Blanche served as a personal attorney for Trump before joining the Justice Department last year.

Blanche, through a spokesperson, referred a request for comment to Pirro’s office.

Allen also is charged with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and two additional firearms counts. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the attempted assassination charge alone.

The Secret Service officer who was shot once in a bullet-resistant vest fired his own weapon five times without hitting anybody. Allen, 31, of Torrance, was injured but was not shot.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge on Monday pressed a jail official to explain why a man charged with trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner and attempting to kill President Trump was placed on restrictive suicide watch after his arrest.

Officials at the city jail in Washington removed Cole Tomas Allen from its designated “suicide status” over the weekend after his attorneys complained that he had been unnecessarily confined in a padded room with constant lighting, repeatedly strip-searched and placed in restraints outside his cell.

But the relaxed conditions didn’t satisfy U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui’s concerns that Allen may have received disparate, punitive treatment in violation of his due process rights. Faruqui noted that the D.C. jail routinely houses convicted killers and others charged with violent crimes without placing them on 24-hour lockdown.

“It could drive a person crazy to be in that situation,” he said.

Faruqui apologized to Allen over his confinement conditions. In response to a news report on that apology, U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro criticized him in a social media post that said Faruqui “believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant.”

Allen’s lawyers said he wasn’t showing any suicidal risk factors after his arrest. But a jail psychiatrist evaluated him and initially concluded that he posed a suicide risk, according to Tony Towns, acting general counsel for the city’s corrections department.

“Every case is different, your honor,” Towns said.

Allen was moved into protective custody after the jail lifted the suicide prevention measures. His attorneys didn’t object to his new confinement status. They had asked the magistrate to cancel Monday’s hearing, but Faruqui forged ahead with it due to his “grave concerns” about Allen’s treatment in jail.

Allen was injured but was not shot during the April 25 attack at the Washington Hilton, which disrupted one of the highest-profile annual events in the nation’s capital.

Allen was armed with guns and knives when he ran through a security checkpoint and pointed his weapon at a Secret Service agent, who fired back five times, authorities said. Pirro has said that Allen fired a shot that struck the agent’s bullet-resistant vest.

Allen later told FBI agents that he didn’t expect to survive the attack, which could help explain why he was deemed to be a possible suicide risk, said Justice Department prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine.

Allen, 31, of Torrance, is charged with attempted assassination of the president and two additional firearms counts. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of the assassination count alone.

Defense attorney Eugene Ohm said Allen was prohibited from having anything in his cell. He asked for a Bible and a visit from a chaplain but hasn’t received either, according to Ohm.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — An attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner by a gunman who came within feet of the ballroom where President Trump sat raised immediate questions about the night’s security protocol — and the future of large, high-profile events in a country with easy access to firearms and increasingly high political tensions.

The man breached metal detectors in front of the Washington Hilton ballroom and sprinted dozens of feet ahead before exchanging fire with federal agents. Shots were fired in an anteroom that had not an hour before seen thousands of guests, including senior government officials, streaming through.

A manifesto allegedly written by the suspect described his targets as members of the Trump administration, ranking from the highest to the lowest — but said he was willing to “go through” any guest standing in his way in order to kill the president’s aides.

The attempted attack on a room full of dignitaries underscored domestic unrest in Trump’s second term and deepened questions about how to effectively create security in a modern era of lone actors, online radicalization and mass shootings. It was the third known time an attempted assassin has come close to Trump since his 2024 presidential campaign began.

Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday called the U.S. Secret Service response a “massive security success story.” But within hours of the incident, bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee demanded a hearing on the agency’s security plans for the dinner.

In the manifesto sent to his family, the alleged gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, marveled at a lack of security.

“No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event,” he wrote. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”

The Hilton, in a ritzy Washington neighborhood, has long hosted the White House correspondents’ dinner. It is the same hotel where President Reagan and three others were shot in 1981.

The shooting caused terror among guests, some of whom noted they had expected more security to enter the event and Trump was whisked offstage within the first minute of shots being fired. While the event has traditionally hosted sitting presidents in the past, Trump’s decision this year to appear for the first time since taking office made the event particularly high profile.

His presence, alongside Vice President JD Vance and much of the Cabinet and line of succession, brought with it added security protocols and personnel — raising questions over whether the storied dinner and its guests of congressional members, diplomats and mid-level officials would have been even more susceptible to attack without Trump in attendance.

Trump on Sunday said it is “tough” to secure a hotel in the middle of a city with “buildings all around and hotel rooms on top,” but praised the Secret Service and law enforcement officers. One officer was shot, not fatally.

Talking to reporters after the incident Saturday night, Trump swiftly likened it to the attempt on his life by a gunman in Butler, Pa., during the 2024 presidential campaign, and suggested that it justified his controversial plans to construct a fortified ballroom on the White House grounds. He called the hotel “not a particularly secure building,” though he later said the room was “very, very secure.”

Plans to reschedule the dinner are under review. White House Correspondents’ Assn. President Wiejia Jiang of CBS News said the organization’s board would meet to assess what had happened.

Blanche said Sunday an investigation into what had happened was ongoing. He had attended a reception before the dinner on the first floor of the hotel hosted by CBS News, one of many that did not require any security check by law enforcement authorities.

“The first takeaway, or the takeaway that should be obvious, is that the system worked. And that we stopped the suspect, and we stopped him as soon as he tried to do what he was trying to do,” Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But the attack raises a question about whether presidential security protocols are effective for modern tactics, or whether the country is “in a new domain” in which those procedures no longer meet the nature of the possible threats, said Neil Shortland, director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Federal investigators should examine what the security policies were, what type of attacks they were designed to prevent, and whether that protocol was out of date, Shortland said.

“Did you follow the policy is a great question,” he said. “Was the policy correct in this modern day and for this modern situation is a separate question.”

The country is facing “the most complex threat environment in our nation’s history,” particularly from lone actors who are often radicalized online, Sam Vinograd, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“It can be true that law enforcement and intelligence professionals prepared exhaustively for last night,” she said Sunday. “But it can also be true that in this moment, in this security environment, the paradigms of the past may not be sufficient to meet the moment.”

That raises the “need to rethink what it is going to take to actually secure these mass gatherings,” she said.

Trump appeared to voice the same idea Saturday evening, telling reporters, “Today, we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.” He went on to say that “this is why we have to have” the East Wing ballroom, which he described as drone-proof and having bulletproof glass.

Kris Brown, president of the gun control organization Brady — which is named after Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was shot in the 1981 attack — said lawmakers should instead consider passing legislation to help prevent gun violence.

“Not every public event can take place in the ballroom, in that kind of protection — nor can we afford to live in a society where our solution to gun violence is to barricade our public officials, our children, away in fortresses,” Brown said.

About 2,000 journalists, dignitaries and other guests attended the event, rushing through rain to enter using multiple hotel entrances. They were asked to show their tickets as they walked past security guards, but there was no check-in procedure or ID check. A Times reporter was waved toward the entrance without showing a ticket as she tried to get it out of her purse.

Inside, guests milled about on multiple levels where pre-dinner receptions were occurring. Hotel guests mingled with the crowd, granted full access to the hotel’s amenities, including its boutiques and restaurants.

Two protesters briefly took over a small red carpet where guests were lined up to take professional photos; Times reporters saw a third woman dressed in a formal gown and shouting protest slogans being escorted out by security guards after apparently having entered the event.

Guests were required to flash their tickets to go down an escalator to the ballroom level, then present the ticket before walking through metal detectors and having bags searched ahead of the ballroom entrance.

Allen, who had reserved a room as a hotel guest, said in his manifesto obtained by the New York Post that security was far less stringent than he had expected. Two U.S. officials told The Times that the contents of the manifesto are authentic.

“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,” he wrote.

He noted that security guards appeared to be focused on protesters and arrivals outside, writing, “apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”

It is possible that steps to further restrict access to the ballroom level, keep guests away from the event location and check attendees’ identities outside could have provided additional security, said Erin Kearns, director of law enforcement partnerships at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center.

“The lesson that can be taken away is just thinking about how to harden and strengthen security at future events when you have so many high-profile people,” she said.

The hotel was a “soft target” with a makeshift perimeter, and there were “almost zero intervention points” where the shooter could have been apprehended before arriving, Shortland said. That was partly because he traveled by train, which does not have security screenings.

Authorities should also examine whether Allen was known to authorities and, if so, whether intelligence operatives could have pieced together his train travel and arrival in the president’s orbit, Shortland said.

The attempted shooting added to a growing list of instances of political violence in the United States. Last year, one Minnesota state legislator and her spouse were killed by a gunman while another lawmaker and his wife survived; the conservative activist Charlie Kirk — whose wife, Erika, was in attendance Saturday — was shot and killed at a speaking event; an arsonist attacked the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Some of that violence has been directed toward Trump, something he frequently talks about. He was injured in the Butler incident, but has used his survival to argue that God saved him so he could become president. Two months later, a Secret Service agent shot at a gunman pointing a rifle on Trump’s golf course as the president golfed.

On Feb. 22, an armed man was shot and killed after entering the secure perimeter around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, when the president was in Washington.

“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. It’s happened to me a little bit,” Trump said Saturday.