Photo: Getty Images
The alleged shooter at Saturday’s (April 25) White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been identified by police as Cole Allen, according to Newsweek.
The 31-year-old California teacher was captured by Secret Service officers and the Metropolitan Police after breaching a security checkpoint and opening fire one floor above the ballroom, where President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and several Cabinet members were seated. He was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and knives, and exchanged gunfire with officers before being tackled to the ground and arrested.
Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday (April 26) that Allen likely traveled by train from California to Chicago before ending up in Washington, where he checked into a hotel before enacting the shooting.
In a manifesto sent to his family minutes before the shooting, Allen apologized and wrote that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
He added that administration officials were targets, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” while other attendees at the dinner, like Secret Service agents and hotel officials, were targets only if necessary.
U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro said Allen will be charged with two counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.
Authorities said he shot a Secret Service agent in the chest during the incident. The agent was wearing a bulletproof vest and was ultimately uninjured.
Trump described Allen as a "lone wolf" and a "whack job” during a press conference held shortly after the shooting. "The guy was a sick guy," Trump added during a Fox News interview on Sunday. "When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians."
During a 60 Minutes interview with CBS News' Norah O’Donnell on Sunday, she read a portion of Allen’s manifesto that referred to a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor.” Trump responded angrily to the excerpt.“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody,” he said.
Neither the manifesto nor O’Donnell ever mentioned Trump by name.
According to Allen’s LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Caltech in 2017 and most recently worked as a part-time teacher at C2 Education as of December 2024.
Allen’s sister told a White House official that Allen kept several handguns stored in their parents’ home and regularly attended the local shooting range, according to Newsweek.
She also spoke with Secret Service and Montgomery County Police officials on Sunday, stating that her brother often made "radical statements" in constant reference to a plan to do "something" to fix the world’s issues.
Allen was also reportedly a member of a group called "The Wide Awakes", a youth organization originally founded in the late 1800s during the 1860 presidential election, comprised of anti-slavery supporters of President Abraham Lincoln.
It now identifies itself as "a network of thousands of artists, cultural workers, and activists driven by the most urgent social and political issues of our time."
The group told Amplifier.org on Sunday that they “had never heard of Cole Allen before yesterday” and that he has never been affiliated with the organization in any way.
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