On Thursday, federal prosecutors released a nearly six-minute video they said shows the moments a man carried guns and knives as he tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington and attempt to kill President Donald Trump. The video release, attributed to authorities and posted by U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro, came as questions circulated about who fired the bullet that struck a Secret Service officer during the melee. The attack disrupted one of Washington’s highest-profile annual events.
Pirro posted the video on social media, using it to address an earlier dispute over the source of the officer’s injury. Prosecutors previously said the agent was shot in a bullet-resistant vest during the confrontation, but they had not confirmed that Cole Tomas Allen was the person who shot the officer. Pirro said Thursday there was no evidence that the officer was hit by friendly fire.
The video appears to show Allen run through a magnetometer checkpoint and point his weapon at the agent, as the agent fired back five times, according to authorities. The video does not make clear from the footage at what moment Allen’s weapon fires. Allen was injured during the Saturday night attack and was not shot, prosecutors said, during the incident at the Washington Hilton, where security and event operations were thrown into chaos.
Authorities also said Allen agreed earlier Thursday to remain jailed while he awaits trial, and he did not enter a plea during a brief appearance in federal court. In court filings pressing for his continued detention, prosecutors wrote that Allen took a picture of himself in his hotel room just minutes before the incident and that he was outfitted with an ammunition bag, a shoulder gun holster and a sheathed knife. The filings also described a message Allen left that authorities said sheds light on his motive, in which he referred to himself as a “Friendly Federal Assassin” and alluded obliquely to grievances over a range of Trump administration actions.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran defended the agency’s security plan for the event and said he would not change it. In an interview with Fox News, Curran said the attack was stopped within seconds at the outermost perimeter of a multi-layered security bubble around Trump, with the distance from the magnetometers to the podium where Trump was seated described as 355 feet and including two sets of stairs, a doorway and multiple armed Secret Service officers in between. He said, “The site was set up perfectly.”
The nearly six-minute video released by Pirro shows Allen walking back and forth down a hallway the day before the attack and briefly checking out the hotel gym. Footage from the security checkpoint shows about a dozen federal officers taking down magnetometers and standing around when the gunman emerges from a doorway and starts sprinting toward them; the gunman quickly reaches the officers before most of them appear to notice him. In the video, Pirro said only one officer visible drew his gun before the gunman passed, and Pirro said that officer was shot and returned fire.
Court papers filed earlier this week also laid out the defense’s position on the evidence. Allen’s lawyers agreed during the hearing before U.S. Magistrate Moxila Upadhyaya to keep him behind bars after initially arguing in court papers that he should be released. In a Wednesday filing, the defense wrote that the government’s case is “based upon inferences drawn about Mr. Allen’s intent that raise more questions than answers” and noted that Allen’s writings never mentioned Trump by name, while leaving open the possibility of pressing for release before trial.
Federal prosecutors charged Allen on Monday with attempted assassination of the president and two additional firearms counts, including discharging a weapon during a crime of violence. Authorities said he faces up to life in prison if convicted on the assassination count alone. Prosecutors described Allen, 31, as being from Torrance, California, and said he worked as a part-time tutor for a test preparation company and was an amateur video game developer.