Cole Tomas Allen, the alleged gunman who rattled the country's top leaders by exchanging gunfire with federal authorities after running through the secure perimeter of a press gala in Washington on Saturday night, had made a long trip from Southern California and had written a “manifesto” threatening Trump administration officials before the brief attack, officials said.
Allen, 31, a Caltech graduate and Torrance High School tutor, is believed to have taken a train first to Chicago and then to D.C. before checking into the Washington Hilton with two guns he had previously purchased, authorities said.
The attacker managed to bypass several layers of security at the White House Correspondents' Association. dinner before being taken down by armed officers outside the ballroom where President Trump and a host of other top federal officials were sitting.
Allen could not be reached for comment, nor could an attorney be identified for him as of Sunday.
According to Trump, Allen had also written a “manifesto” before the attack, which he had shared with his family and which his brother had pointed out to local authorities in Connecticut. The New York Post reported that Allen described himself in the document as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and revealed that he intended to kill Trump administration officials.
New London (Conn.) Deputy Police Chief John Perry said that around 10:30 p.m. a man came into the lobby of the agency's headquarters to report that he had received a concerning email from Allen. The family member initially thought it was spam, but then saw the news about what happened in DC and felt they needed to report it.
Perry did not say what was in the email and did not know exactly what time it was sent. But the relative said he only saw it and opened it around 10 pm. “I think he was watching what was going on and he kind of put two and two together and said I had to go to my local police department,” Perry said.
Police officials provided the email to the Secret Service and the FBI, he said. Trump said the document would be released, but it had not been released as of Sunday. Authorities said criminal charges were pending against the suspect and he would likely appear in court on Monday.
On Saturday night, local and federal law enforcement officers, including the FBI, swarmed the Torrance neighborhood where Allen is believed to have lived in a home with his family, and Torrance police cleared the road and posted police tape along part of the street. A man who responded to a knock on the front door said, “Not now” and declined to comment further.
The foiled attack marked the latest in a series of incidents in which gunmen have come dangerously close to Trump, renewing questions about the security of the nation's commander in chief at a time of intense political division at home and conflicts abroad.
Trump was shot in the ear at one of his presidential campaign events in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, the first of two attempts on his life during that campaign cycle. The other involved a gunman who targeted the president while he played golf in Florida, before federal agents intervened. Earlier this year, a gunman was killed at the Mar-a-Lago presidential club after breaching a security perimeter.
On Sunday, questions arose about how such a security breach could have happened again, and whether large, high-profile events are safe for top officials in a nation where firearms are easy to obtain and ubiquitous.
Acting lawyer. Gen. Todd Blanche, in an interview on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, said federal authorities believe the suspect had set out only to “target people who work in the administration, probably including the president,” but that a motive was still being determined and evidence was still being gathered, including from devices taken from Allen and in interviews with people who know him.
“So far, we don't have any connection to any particular political directive from President Trump or Iran or anything else we're doing in this country, but we're looking into it,” he said.
Blanche also downplayed the threat he posed to Trump, other officials in the room, such as Vice President JD Vance and first lady Melania Trump, and the hundreds of other attendees at the annual event, suggesting that Allen had essentially been stopped in his tracks shortly after passing through a checkpoint of metal detectors and federal agents, a dramatic video of which Trump posted online.
“Let's not forget that the suspect didn't get very far. He barely crossed the perimeter,” Blanche said. “And while this was extraordinarily dangerous and put many lives at risk and there's no doubt that's something we're going to have to learn from over the next two weeks, the system worked. We were safe, President Trump was safe. His Secret Service agents kept him safe. We were all safe.”
Some questioned Blanche's assessment of Allen's rape beyond safety, which he claimed was only “by a few feet.”
According to other attendees, including Times reporters, event staff were checking tickets, albeit not very thoroughly, at several points before the escalators descending to the metal detectors where Allen allegedly ran past armed security.
The detectors were just outside the event hall and where the event bathrooms were located, and the attacker was taken to the ground 10 to 15 feet beyond them, attendees said. Shots, including two from the gunman, according to Blanche, were heard in the ballroom.
Allen, who graduated from Caltech in 2017 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and is registered to vote without party preference, made a $25 political contribution toward then-Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign challenging Trump for the presidency in 2024.
While at Caltech, he was a teaching assistant and a member of the school's Christian community and Nerf club, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later studied computer science as a graduate student at CSU-Dominguez Hills.
Allen was named Teacher of the Month for December 2024 at C2 Education, which specializes in college test prep, tutoring and academic advising. A C2 Education representative was not immediately available for comment.
According to the New York Post, Allen himself had mocked the event's security in his previous writings, describing finding much less security at the hotel than he expected when he arrived, armed, to check in.
“I expected security cameras around every turn, bugged hotel rooms, armed officers every 10 feet, metal detectors at the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they're kidding me!) is nothing. No damn security. Not on the transportation. Not at the hotel. Not at the event,” he wrote, according to the Post. “I come in with multiple weapons and not a single person considers the possibility that they could be a threat.”
Authorities did not detail Allen's alleged route of travel to DC, other than to say it was by train. In response to questions about whether Allen had taken Amtrak to get to Washington and whether his luggage had passed any security checks, Amtrak said only that it is cooperating with federal authorities.
Trump also focused on security at the hotel being inadequate, in addition to posting video of the suspect running through security and several photographs of him being detained on the hotel floor.
While praising the federal agents who took down the gunman, Trump suggested that events with top U.S. officials should be held in more secure facilities, such as the giant ballroom he is trying to build on the White House grounds after demolishing the old East Wing.
“What happened last night is exactly why our great military, Secret Service, law enforcement, and, for different reasons, every president for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe and secure ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. “This event would never have happened with the top-secret military ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It can't be built fast enough!”
Weijia Jiang, president of the correspondents' association, said in a statement Sunday that the group's board of directors “will meet to evaluate what happened and determine how to proceed.” He also thanked the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement for keeping people safe, and praised the journalists in the room for getting to work informing the public about what happened.
Times staff writers Richard Winton, Ben Wieder and Justine McDaniel contributed to this report.
