{"id":291626,"date":"2026-04-29T15:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/291626\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:58:11","slug":"mystery-surrounds-cole-tomas-allen-and-final-moments-of-d-c-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/291626\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery surrounds Cole Tomas Allen and final moments of D.C. attack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Four days after Torrance teacher Cole Tomas Allen allegedly attacked the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner in Washington, some facts are clear.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Video shows him running through a security perimeter at the hotel where the event took place. Authorities allege he wrote a \u201cmanifesto\u201d explaining his plans to shoot members of the Trump Cabinet. He allegedly informed family members of his plans shortly before the attack.<\/a> <\/p>\n

But some key details remain unknown, including exactly what went down during those frantic seconds at the hotel and what motivated him. New court documents released Wednesday offer more details, but officials have still not said whether Cole opened fire and who fired the shot that wounded a secret service agent at the scene.<\/p>\n

\"Cole <\/p>\n

Cole Tomas Allen in court<\/p>\n

(Dana Verkouteren via Associated Press)<\/p>\n

What we know<\/p>\n

Charges
Federal authorities charged Allen, 31, with transporting firearms across state lines while traveling by train from California to Washington and with discharging a firearm during the incident at the Washington Hilton, where officials said a federal agent was shot in his ballistic vest. Asst. U.S. Atty. Jocelyn Ballantine said Allen \u201ctraveled across multiple state lines with a firearm\u201d and \u201cattempted to assassinate the president with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.\u201d Neither Allen nor his attorney could be reached for comment. Allen was charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump.<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u2018Manifesto\u2019
Officials cited a manifesto allegedly written by Allen in which he called himself a \u201cFriendly Federal Assassin\u201d and said he was targeting Trump administration officials \u201cprioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.\u201d The note says, \u201cI don\u2019t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Message to family
Prosecutors also detailed an email Allen allegedly sent to family members just as he was preparing to breach the event perimeter, in which he allegedly wrote that top Trump administration officials were his target but that he was willing to \u201cgo through\u201d others<\/a> at the event to reach them.<\/p>\n

Moments before attack
Newly released documents from prosecutors say Allen \u201cleft his room at the Washington Hilton multiple times\u201d that night. \u201cDuring that time, he used his cellphone to visit the webpage \u201cPresidential Schedule \u2013 CivicTracker.\u201d Shortly after 8 p.m., while back inside his hotel room, \u201cthe defendant used his cellphone to take a photograph of himself in the mirror,\u201d the filing noted. He allegedly prescheduled emails with the \u201cApology and Explanation\u201d attachment sent a few minutes later, at approximately 8:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cShortly thereafter, the defendant rushed the screening checkpoint on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton with a raised shotgun,\u201d the federal prosecutors alleged. A law enforcement source told The Times Allen fell as he ran after losing balance and that is when officers were able to jump on top of him, pinning him down and disarmed him. <\/p>\n

\"People <\/p>\n

People react after an incident at the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Assn. dinner on Saturday. <\/p>\n

(Nathan Howard \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

What we don\u2019t know<\/p>\n

Timeline
Allen was taken down by agents s<\/a>hortly after rushing past them and before descending stairs and entering a ballroom where Trump and other top administration officials were seated. But it remains unclear whether he fired shots before his arrest. A Secret Service agent was wounded, and officials have not conclusively determined who was responsible for that. <\/p>\n

Wounded agent
A Secret Service officer \u201cwas shot once in the chest,\u201d according to the federal filing against Allen. That officer then \u201cdrew his service weapon and fired multiple times at Allen, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot.\u201d The officer was later treated at a hospital for minor injuries. Asked why there was no allegation Allen fired a round at the officer, acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said the investigation is still in a preliminary stage with ballistics testing to be done. \u201cWe want to get that right, so we\u2019re still looking at that,\u201d Blanche said at a news conference. \u201cAs far as getting into exacting ballistics, I\u2019m not going to do that today because it\u2019s still being looked at and finalized.\u201d <\/p>\n

The new court documents said agents seized \u201ca Mossberg 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube. An additional six unfired cartridges were attached with Velcro to the shotgun in a detachable ammunition carrier, and the defendant possessed another ten unfired cartridges in a small leather bag. The defendant was also in possession of a Rock Island Armory 1911 .38 caliber pistol loaded with ten rounds of ammunition.\u201d The new documents do not accuse Allen of shooting the agent.<\/p>\n

Motive
The rambling \u201cmanifesto\u201d offers some clues to a potential state of mind. \u201cI 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\u2019t come to that,\u201d he wrote, according to the charging document. But the manifesto contrasts with the descriptions people who know Allen offered about the suspect. Allen is a Caltech graduate and tutor, and those who know him expressed shock at the allegations, saying he did not talk of violence or hold extreme views as far as they knew.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next<\/p>\n

U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh, who presided over the hearing, set a second hearing for Thursday morning to determine whether Allen will be held in custody. <\/p>\n

Times staff writers Kevin Rector and Ben Wieder contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four days after Torrance teacher Cole Tomas Allen allegedly attacked the White House correspondents\u2019 dinner in Washington, some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3659,6577,122736,124373,1043,8593,9977,1629,48,52,51,47,50,49,124372,2322,3335,3020,46093,114964,558],"class_list":["post-291626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-allen","tag-authority","tag-cole-tomas-allen","tag-d-c-attack","tag-event","tag-family-member","tag-federal-agent","tag-firearm","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-manifesto","tag-officer","tag-official","tag-president-trump","tag-trump-administration-official","tag-u-s-atty","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}