Ten minutes before shots were fired outside the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, Cole Tomas Allen had already put his reasoning in writing.
Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was taken into custody after allegedly charging a security checkpoint outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where President Donald Trump, the first lady, senior administration officials and more than 2,500 guests had gathered.
Cole Tomas Allen rushes at the security forces
(Video: Truth Social)
According to CBS News, Allen sent members of his family a “manifesto” shortly before the incident. Law enforcement sources said his brother, alarmed by the email, called police in Connecticut on Saturday night. A relative later handed the document to authorities, according to a second report.
The document was signed: “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Allen was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives when he charged the checkpoint. Trump and other administration officials were quickly escorted out of the event, which was canceled shortly afterward.
Authorities later found additional writings at Allen’s home in Torrance and in his 10th-floor room at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was being held.
Throughout the email, Allen’s tone was described as matter-of-fact and at times ironic. “Hello everybody!” he wrote. “So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today.”
“I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for ‘Most Wanted,’” he wrote.
He also apologized to colleagues and students for saying he had a personal emergency, adding that by the time they read the email he likely would need emergency care, referring to any potential injuries as “self-inflicted status.”
Allen wrote that he planned to target Trump administration officials, “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” He did not refer to Trump or the dinner by name, but said law enforcement officers, hotel employees and guests were not his intended targets.
He specifically excluded one senior official from the target list.
“Administration officials (not including [FBI Director Kash] Patel): they are targets, prioritised from highest-ranking to lowest,” he wrote, according to the second report.
Allen said he did not intend to target Secret Service, Capitol Police or National Guard troops unless necessary. “I hope they are wearing body armor,” he wrote. A Secret Service officer who was shot was wearing a bulletproof vest and was released from the hospital Sunday.
In another section, Allen tried to answer what he imagined readers would see as objections to the attack.
“As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this,” he wrote as one hypothetical objection. “Rebuttal: I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack.”
Another objection he raised was that as a Christian, he should “turn the other cheek.”
“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up, or a child starved, or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behaviour; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
He added: “I am no longer willing to permit a paedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Allen also wrote that he did not expect forgiveness.
“I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it,” he wrote, referring to the dinner.
The document also included criticism of security at the Washington Hilton.
“PS,” he wrote, “Ok now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? … No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event.”
“The one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” he wrote.
“The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before. Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.”
Because the Washington Hilton remained an active hotel with public spaces during the dinner, the Secret Service did not secure the entire building, only the specific areas where the dinner was held.
Family members told investigators after the attempted attack that Allen often used “radical” rhetoric and had sometimes spoken about doing “something” to fix perceived problems in society, according to federal law enforcement and White House officials cited by CBS.
In another passage, Allen described how he felt before carrying out the alleged attack.
“Oh, and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels: it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done,” he wrote.
Trump, who had declined invitations to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in previous years of his presidency, attended this year’s gala with the first lady. The event, which celebrates the First Amendment, is expected to be rescheduled within 30 days, Trump said.