Cole Allen, the suspect behind the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting, has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump.
Allen has been charged with three criminal counts, NBC News reports. He has been formally accused of attempting to assassinate Trump, interstate transportation of weapons to commit a felony, and discharging a firearm during a violent crime.
“Mr. Allen has no prior arrests or convictions,” court-appointed defense lawyer Tezira Abe said, as per the report. “He is presumed innocent at this time.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine told the court, “He attempted to assassinate the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. We are asking the court to preventively detain Mr. Allen.”
Allen’s preliminary hearing has been set for May 11.
According to Allen’s manifesto, where he called himself a “Friendly Federal Assassin,” he stated he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” and declared that “this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.”
“While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)” The manifesto added, “I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
President Trump told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that he sat down and read the manifesto himself.
“I read a manifesto. He says he’s radicalized,” Trump said. “He was a Christian, a believer, and then he became an anti-Christian. And he had a lot of change. He’s been going through a lot based on what he wrote.”
