Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday said the man set to be charged with attacking the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is believed to have been targeting members of the Trump administration.
“It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche told NBC’s Meet the Press in comments on the suspect, who has widely been identified as Cole Thomas Allen, 31, of California.
Blanche said the Trump administration will refuse to start backing away from holding events featuring high-profile officials due to safety concerns. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other top officials in the line of succession were among those who attended the prestigious dinner Saturday evening and were swiftly evacuated by authorities as the shooting ensued.
“We will not stop doing things like we did last night in the administration,” Blanche said.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said Allen will be charged with two counts of using a firearm and a second crime of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon after ramming a security checkpoint with weapons at the dinner in Washington.
Blanche said officials believe the suspect traveled by train from California to Chicago and then to Washington, where he checked in as a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the event was held Saturday evening.
TRUMP AND CABINET MEMBERS EVACUATED FROM CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER AFTER SHOOTING
“We’re still investigating a motive, and that’s something that will necessarily take a couple of days at least,” he said. “We believe he was targeting administration officials in this attack, attempted attack, but that’s again, quite preliminary.”
Allen appears to have donated $25 to former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign in 2024, according to federal campaign finance records. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology before later obtaining a master’s degree in computer science and becoming an independent video game developer, according to his LinkedIn profile. Allen had no known criminal record prior to the harrowing event Saturday evening, according to officials.
