A man is set to be charged with attacking the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, after President Donald Trump and other top officials were evacuated from the event Saturday evening.
Cole Thomas Allen, 31, has widely been identified as the shooter. The suspect had no criminal history prior to being arrested for allegedly running through the event’s security checkpoint, shooting a Secret Service officer, and running toward the main room where Trump and other attendees were gathered for the prestigious annual dinner, according to officials, with Trump alleging an anti-Christian motive.
Background
Allen is a part-time teacher from Torrance, a Los Angeles suburb, who appears to have attended the California Institute of Technology, one of the most elite schools in the country.
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Allen was a mechanical engineering student at Caltech, where he graduated in 2017 before later obtaining a master’s degree in computer science from California State University in 2025 and becoming an independent video game developer, according to his Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Allen worked for a tutoring firm in Torrance called C2 Education, according to CBS News, and received a “Teacher of the Month” award from the company in December 2024.
He is said to have been a registered Democrat and appears to have donated $25 to former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign in 2024, according to federal campaign finance records. Allen was also a member of a group called “The Wide Awakes,” according to reports.
On Saturday evening, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed to thoroughly probe the suspect’s background.
“We will be examining this individual’s background thoroughly. That process has already started,” he said during a press conference alongside Trump. “We will analyze all evidence immediately to make sure that we safeguard this country.”
Motive
Allen posted anti-Trump and anti-Christian content on social media, according to reports, with Trump saying Sunday that the suspect “hates Christians” and that the attack was “a religious thing.”
“The guy is a sick guy when you read his manifesto,” the president said. “He hates Christians, that’s one thing for sure. … I think his sister or his brother actually was complaining about it to law enforcement.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier Sunday that Allen appeared to have been targeting Trump and other administration officials during an NBC News interview but cautioned that the investigation is ongoing.
“It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche said.
“We’re still investigating a motive, and that’s something that will necessarily take a couple of days at least,” he added. “We believe he was targeting administration officials in this attack, attempted attack, but that’s, again, quite preliminary.”
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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 that was hosting the dinner. Blanche has said it is unclear how the shooter was able to bring weapons into the hotel and that the suspect is not cooperating with authorities.
When he was tackled at the dinner on Saturday evening, the shooter was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives, according to interim chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, Jeff Carroll, who said it appears the gunman was “a lone actor.”
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn stated that the shooter aimed to execute a “national tragedy.”
“[Allen] underestimated the protective capabilities of the U.S. Secret Service, and was stopped at first contact. The strength of our layered security posture was evident, with a myriad of countermeasures ahead,” Quinn said in a statement.
Charges
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., said the suspect will be charged with two counts of using a firearm and a second crime of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.
She said the suspect would be arraigned on Monday in federal district court and that additional charges were expected.
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Blanche expects an indictment to follow the charges.
“There’s a lot of federal charges that could be in play beyond those two charges, but it depends on us understanding his motive, his intent, his premeditation of what led into him deciding he was going to do what he did,” he said on CBS News’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.