Judge questions suicide watch for suspect in White House correspondents dinner attack

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui on Monday confronted officials from the District of Columbia’s corrections department over why Cole Tomas Allen — the 31-year-old California man charged with trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and kill President Donald Trump — was placed on a restrictive suicide watch after his arrest, warning that the conditions he endured could “drive a person crazy.”

At a hearing in Washington, Faruqui pressed Tony Towns, the acting general counsel for the city’s corrections department, to justify the decision to put Allen in a padded room with constant lighting, to subject him to repeated strip searches, and to restrain him outside his cell. Faruqui noted that the D.C. jail routinely holds people convicted of murder and other violent crimes without imposing a 24-hour lockdown.

“It could drive a person crazy to be in that situation,” Faruqui said. He then apologized directly to Allen over the conditions of his confinement.

Allen, of Torrance, California, was injured but not shot when he ran through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton on April 25 while armed with guns and knives and pointed a weapon at a Secret Service agent, authorities said. The agent fired five times; court documents allege that Allen fired a shot that struck the agent’s bullet-resistant vest. After his arrest, Allen told FBI agents he did not expect to survive the attack — an admission that Jocelyn Ballantine, a Justice Department prosecutor, said could help explain why a jail psychiatrist initially determined he posed a suicide risk.

“Every case is different, your honor,” Towns replied when Faruqui challenged why Allen was treated differently from other pretrial detainees.

The jail lifted the suicide-prevention measures over the weekend, moving Allen into protective custody after his defense attorneys complained that he had been unnecessarily confined. His lawyers did not object to the new status, and they had asked Faruqui to cancel Monday’s session. The judge forged ahead anyway, citing “grave concerns” about Allen’s treatment.

Defense attorney Eugene Ohm told the court that Allen had been prohibited from having anything in his cell, and that requests for a Bible and a visit from a chaplain had gone unmet. Ohm said Allen had shown no suicidal risk factors at the time of his booking.

After news outlets reported on Faruqui’s apology to Allen, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro criticized the judge in a post on X. She wrote that Faruqui “believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant.”

Allen faces a charge of attempted assassination of the president and two additional firearms counts. If convicted on the assassination count alone, he could be sentenced to life in prison.