Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, apparently had no prior criminal record before he armed himself and stormed the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday to assassinate the president and members of his administration.
"I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes," he told his family in a manifesto.
The manifesto also highlighted the "insane" lack of security at the Washington Hilton, saying that Iranian agents could have come to the dinner with more lethal weaponry and "no one would have noticed."
When the president attends a large public event, the U.S. Secret Service runs a multi-layered security operation that includes securing the outer perimeter, access control, screening checkpoints, an inner security zone, and protective detail.
The annual Correspondents' Dinner is unusual because it is held in a working hotel, not a fully locked down government site, which means some public access points still exist.
The main ballroom used for the dinner is located on the hotel's lower level below the main lobby. Guests typically enter at street/lobby level then go down escalators or stairs to reach the International Ballroom.
On Saturday, Allen charged through the first Secret Service checkpoint and tried to shoot his way into the ballroom, but he did not make it beyond the hotel interior public areas.
Authorities say an officer wearing a bullet-resistant vest was shot in the vest and is expected to recover.
"It's my understanding that the gunman never got to the same level in the hotel where the president was actually located," notes Steve Meacham, who spent 31 years as a law enforcement officer and helped provide security with the Secret Service during several presidential visits to New York.
He now serves as associate professor of Criminal Justice at Cedarville University in Ohio.
"He apparently ran through the initial security checkpoint, but there are a number of checkpoints beyond that," Meacham relays. "So, in that respect, it sounds like the Secret Service had a pretty good plan as far as making sure there was a number of checkpoints and personnel in between the initial checkpoint and then beyond that."
Meacham says even if a person gets past a certain area, Secret Service agents are positioned in the next layer to take action and take the person down.
"In this case, that seems to have been effective," he submits. "This gunman was actually taken down before he even reached the escalator to go to the next level."
Retired police Lt. Randy Sutton of The Wounded Blue says the protective detail performed perfectly, but he still has "a lot of questions."
The first is how did Allen get his weapons in the hotel and as close as he did by charging through a phalanx of Secret Service, D.C. police and other law enforcement?
"He managed to get off five shots," Sutton notes. "He managed to hit the uniformed Secret Service officer, who thankfully was wearing body armor, which probably saved his life."
Video from the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner takes place, reportedly showed Allen rushing past a group of Secret Service officers who appeared to be in a relaxed posture as the event was already underway one floor below.
The second question is why Allen — and, for that matter, Palm Beach would-be assassin Ryan Routh — were still alive immediately after their attacks, why the Secret Service would open fire yet miss "every single time."
Sutton says it is fortunate that the three attempts on President Trump's life were all amateurs.
"If this had been a professional or a state-sponsored type of event, this could have been devastating for this country," he asserts.
He says these questions should have been asked and answered after the first attempt on the president's life, though Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot Donald Trump in the ear during the July 13, 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was shot and killed by officers at the scene shortly after he began firing.
Allen appeared in federal court Monday and was charged with the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, with the transport of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce, and with discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.
