The suspect arrested for the shooting that shut down the 2026 White House Correspondents Dinner and saw Donald Trump evacuated could spend the rest of his life in a federal prison if found guilty, the Acting Attorney General declared today.
“Today the Department of Justice filed three federal charges in the United States District Court against Cole Thomas Allen,” Todd Blanche said Monday, just hours after the formal charges were brought down in a hearing in DC with the suspect present.
“The first count is the attempted assassination of the President of the United States,” the Acting AG added, with FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro by his side at the DOJ. “This count is punishable by up to life in prison.”
Cole Allen (inset) Justice Department in Washington, DC
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Allen, 31, of Torrance, CA, also was charged with transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce. and discharging a firearm during a violent crime. The second charge carries a possible sentence of 10 years in prison and the third charge could see him serving a minimum of 10 years to a maximum of life behind bars if a jury decides he is guilty.
The DOJ presser was carried live on CNN, Fox News, MS Now, the BBC and other news channels, as well as on C-SPAN and online.
“We were safe,” Blanche made a point of stating this afternoon, praising the hundreds of security personal that stood between Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, VP JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson and others in the line of succession in the Washington Hilton on April 25. Still, to that, the Acting AG reiterated his desire to see any legal opposition to Trump’s much boosted $400 million White House ballroom dropped, noting that papers on that matter were filed today in light of the security breach at the WHCD this past weekend.
On the matter of Allen, former Fox News host Pirro stated before the cameras this afternoon that more is to come.
“Those charges are only three charges that are in the complaint that has been presented in federal district court about an hour ago,” Pirro said. “There will be additional charges as this investigation continues to unfold.”
Pirro also detailed how Allen, who wrote up a manifesto against the Trump administration (with an odd carve-out for the FBI’s Patel) booked a room on April 6 at the barricaded Hilton for April 24-26. It was coming down as a guest of the hotel to the security area one floor up from the ballroom where the WHCD was being held that allowed Allen to get as close as he did and fire off at least one shot as Secret Service also shot their guns.
A longtime partisan defender of Trump, and his ex-personal lawyer, Blanche turned the spotlight on the media as well in the aftermath of Saturday’s potentially horrific incident.
“The political violence and rhetoric has got to stop,” the Acting AG started off. “That’s something President Trump said right after the incident on Saturday night, it is something that Karoline Leavitt talked about a couple hours ago.”
Then, on the same day that Trump started once again blaming Democrats for the ever escalating violence and Melania Trump went after Jimmy Kimmel for a mock WHCD roast he delivered on his late-night show on April 23, Blanche shifted focus. “many people in this room, if we’re going to be honest about it …they’re just as guilty as a lot of people on X,” he said. “When you have reporters, when you have media, media just being overly critical and calling the president horrible names for no reason and without evidence, without proof. It shouldn’t surprise us that this type of rhetoric takes place.”
ABC and its parent company Disney have been silent so far over the Trumps’ seemingly time delayed accusations against Kimmel and their call to have him (once again) fired.
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