White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect to be formally charged in court today
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.The suspected gunman in the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday evening, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, from Torrance, California, is due to appear in court later today.
He is expected to be formally charged with using a firearm during a violent crime and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.
“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 last night,” acting US attorney general Todd Blanche told CBS News’ Face the Nation programme.
The suspect’s writings – reportedly found in his hotel room – are being examined as part of the investigation into the attack. An alleged manifesto was reported earlier in which the suspect called himself a “Friendly Federal Assassin” and created a list of targets for the shooting, formatted from highest to lowest priority, with Trump administration officials at the top.
Despite the shooting raising security concerns, Buckingham Palace released a statement yesterday evening confirming that King Charles and Queen Camilla are going ahead with their plans to visit the US on Monday.
It is understood there will be some modest adjustments to one or two royal engagements during the trip, but the overall plan remains unchanged, as my colleague Robyn Vinter notes in this story.
The king is due to visit Virginia, New York and Washington DC during the four-day trip to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence. He will meet Trump privately and will take part in a state banquet held for him and Queen Camilla.
Key events
White House press dinner shooting raises questions over security at event
Edward Helmore
The shooting in the White House correspondents’ gala has prompted questions over security with some asking how a shooter was able to get close to where Donald Trump and many other senior administration officials were gathered and many others praising the actions of law enforcement that swiftly stopped the attack.
As details about the shooting at the Washington Hilton continued to surface, the alleged shooter Cole Tomas Allen, 31, mocked an “insane” lack of security at the Washington dinner in a manifesto reportedly send to his family 10 minutes before his assault started.
“I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” the suspect said in the alleged manifesto first obtained by the New York Post, and which expressed hostility to Trump and his administration.
Allen, a Caltech-graduate, said “this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again,” he wrote.
According to the Associated Press, the Secret Service has long used the annual dinner to put some agents through their paces, in part because it was studied after the shooting of Ronald Reagan there by John Hinckley Jr on 30 March 1981.
The hotel built extensive security modifications specifically to accommodate the president, including a secured garage designed to fit the presidential limo, which leads to a dedicated elevator and staircase to a secured suite.
But hotels, while privately-owned, function as “public accommodations” meaning they remain open to other guests staying there and staying at the building ahead of time – apparently that being the method the attacker was able to access the hotel with his weapons.
In a statement posted to X yesterday, former US president Barack Obama urged Americans to “reject the idea that violence has any place in our democracy”.
“It’s also a sobering reminder of the courage and sacrifice that U.S. Secret Service Agents show every day. I’m grateful to them – and thankful that the agent who was shot is going to be okay,” he wrote, acknowledging that the full details about the shooter’s motives have not emerged.
As we mentioned in the opening post, King Charles and Queen Camilla are visiting the US today on the first day of a four day trip to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence and celebrate UK-US relations.
Charles, however, will have to walk a tight diplomatic tightrope as the so-called “special relationship” is under serious strain due to Trump’s belittling of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, for refusing to get actively involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Reuters recently reported that an internal Pentagon email suggested reviewing the US position on the Falklands as punishment for the UK’s cautious stance on the war, putting even more pressure on the high-stakes visit.
We have some details on the activities Charles and Camilla are expected to partake in over the week in what will be the first British state visit to the US since the late Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 2007.
Trump and the first lady, Melania, will greet Charles and Camilla at the White House at 4.15pm today, before having a private “tea” and going on a “beehive tour”.
The king is also due to visit Virginia and New York during the trip, and is expected to attend a state banquet held for him and Camilla.
What do we know about the suspected gunman?
My colleagues Fabiola Cineas, George Chidi and Robyn Vinter filed this report:
Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles, has no record of criminal charges or a civil court history in Los Angeles county, according to a records search.
A LinkedIn profile with the name “Cole Allen” showed a picture of a man which appeared to match the photo shared by Donald Trump.
On the social media profile, Allen said he was an engineer with a passion for game development, based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
“Mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth,” according to his profile, which noted that he had an undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology. The profile also states Allen achieved a masters in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, last year.
Early reports suggest those who had known Allen in his younger years were surprised to discover he was the suspect.
A former high school volleyball teammate at Pacific Lutheran high school in Gardena, California, told NBC News his experience was that Allen was a “borderline genius” and “super stable”.
“Other people study hard,” said the former teammate, who did not want to be named. “He didn’t have to study. It would just come to him. He was really, really smart.”
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will convene a meeting this week that will include the Secret Service and the US department of homeland security to assess protocols for major presidential events, a US official has told CBS News.
Nobody was killed in the attack, although one officer wearing a bulletproof vest who was shot was taken to hospital.
The ability of the suspect, who was reportedly armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives, to get close to Donald Trump and his aides exposed some troubling vulnerabilities in the Secret Service’s protective model, law enforcement officials have said.
It was the third time since 2024 that Trump had been under threat by an attacker in his immediate vicinity – including the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which a bullet grazed his ear.
A Senate committee report, published in July 2025, on the attempted assassination in Butler described the events as a “cascade of preventable failures” and called for more severe disciplinary action to be taken with the Secret Service in the future.
Trump says he ‘wasn’t worried’ during shooting
Roque Planas
Donald Trump spoke with CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell in an interview that aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes describing his ordeal at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when shots rang out.
“I wasn’t worried,” Trump said in the interview when asked how worried he was about possible injuries after hearing the gun shots. “I understand life. We live in a crazy world.”
The interview turned frosty when O’Donnell put portions of the gunman’s manifesto to Trump, which appeared to refer to the president as a “rapist” and “pedophile”, prompting him to call O’Donnell a “disgrace” and the media “horrible people”.
Recounting his events of the shooting, Trump told 60 Minutes that his curiosity probably slowed the Secret Service’s efforts to rush him to safety.
“I wanted to see what was happening,” Trump said. “I wasn’t making it that easy for them. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of problem, a bad one – and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom.
“I was surrounded by great people,” Trump added. “And I probably made them act a little more slowly. I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute.’”
You can read the full story here:
White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect to be formally charged in court today
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.The suspected gunman in the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday evening, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, from Torrance, California, is due to appear in court later today.
He is expected to be formally charged with using a firearm during a violent crime and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.
“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 last night,” acting US attorney general Todd Blanche told CBS News’ Face the Nation programme.
The suspect’s writings – reportedly found in his hotel room – are being examined as part of the investigation into the attack. An alleged manifesto was reported earlier in which the suspect called himself a “Friendly Federal Assassin” and created a list of targets for the shooting, formatted from highest to lowest priority, with Trump administration officials at the top.
Despite the shooting raising security concerns, Buckingham Palace released a statement yesterday evening confirming that King Charles and Queen Camilla are going ahead with their plans to visit the US on Monday.
It is understood there will be some modest adjustments to one or two royal engagements during the trip, but the overall plan remains unchanged, as my colleague Robyn Vinter notes in this story.
The king is due to visit Virginia, New York and Washington DC during the four-day trip to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence. He will meet Trump privately and will take part in a state banquet held for him and Queen Camilla.
