Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday said that the man set to be charged with attacking the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is believed to have been targeting members of the Trump administration.
“It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche told NBC’s Meet the Press in comments on the suspect, who has widely been identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of California.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said Allen will be charged with two counts of using a firearm and a second crime of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon after ramming a security checkpoint with weapons at the dinner in Washington, D.C., which was attended by President Donald Trump and other top officials.
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Blanche said officials believe the suspect traveled by train from California to Chicago and then to Washington, where he checked in as a guest at the Washington Hilton hotel, where the event was held Saturday evening.
“We’re still investigating a motive, and that’s something that will necessarily take a couple of days at least,” he said. “We believe he was targeting administration officials in this attack, attempted attack, but that’s again, quite preliminary.”