{"id":623795,"date":"2026-05-04T23:25:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T23:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/623795\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T23:25:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T23:25:14","slug":"judge-disturbed-over-legally-deficient-treatment-of-trump-gala-shooting-suspect-washington-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/623795\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge \u2018disturbed\u2019 over \u2018legally deficient\u2019 treatment of Trump gala shooting suspect | Washington DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

A US judge on Monday apologized to the man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump<\/a> for the \u201clegally deficient\u201d treatment he has faced in a Washington DC, jail, including being placed on suicide watch, separated from other inmates and denied a Bible.<\/p>\n

The US magistrate judge Zia Faruqui said he was disturbed by the conditions for Cole Allen, who allegedly fired a shotgun during a foiled attack on Trump and senior officials in his administration at a 25 April press gala. The judge said the conditions were inappropriate for a person with no criminal history.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever you\u2019ve been through, I apologize,\u201d Faruqui said during a court hearing.<\/p>\n

Faruqui said he had an obligation to make sure the 31-year-old Los Angeles-area man is \u201ctreated with the basic decency of a human being\u201d. Allen last week agreed to remain detained in the local jail in Washington after his lawyers said they would not contest arguments from prosecutors that he posed a danger. He has been charged with attempted assassination and firearms offenses. He has not yet entered a plea.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine said Allen told FBI agents after his arrest at the site of the annual White House Correspondents\u2019 Association dinner that he did not expect to survive the alleged attack. Allen\u2019s lawyers raised concerns that he was placed on suicide watch despite showing no suicidal tendencies during a health evaluation, housed in a padded cell for 23 hours a day and denied access to a Bible. Allen has since been removed from suicide watch, but remains in restrictive housing, a condition his lawyers said they did not oppose.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, it\u2019s not working. It\u2019s insufficient. I think it\u2019s legally deficient,\u201d Faruqui said of Allen\u2019s treatment in the jail.<\/p>\n

The judge noted that while the allegations against Allen were \u201cextremely serious\u201d, pre-trial detention is not supposed to be punitive.<\/p>\n

Faruqui compared Allen\u2019s treatment with that of people who took part in the 6 January 2021, attack on the US Capitol, when Trump supporters tried to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden\u2019s victory in the 2020 US presidential election. Faruqui said defendants in those cases were treated more favorably despite engaging in what the judge called comparable conduct.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fascinated and disturbed,\u201d the judge said. Many Capitol riot defendants, who Trump has since pardoned, also objected to their treatment in the same Washington jail, and were housed in a unit separate from other inmates.<\/p>\n

Faruqui ordered a lawyer for the jail to alert him by Tuesday morning when a final decision would be made about the terms of Allen\u2019s confinement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A US judge on Monday apologized to the man accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-623795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}