Fresh evidence submitted by U.S. prosecutors has laid bare detailed pre-attack planning by the man accused of storming last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in a bid to assassinate former President Donald Trump, according to court documents filed this week. The 31-year-old suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, has entered a not guilty plea to all charges against him, including the attempted assassination of the sitting former president. Prosecutors argue he should be held without bond ahead of his trial, citing what they call a meticulously planned, violent plot that targeted senior U.S. government leadership.
The newly unsealed memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice includes never-before-seen photographs that prosecutors say Allen took of himself inside his Washington, D.C. hotel room roughly 90 minutes before the attack. The images show Allen wearing formal dinner attire underneath loaded weapons strapped to his body: a shoulder holster holding a semi-automatic handgun, a sheathed fixed-blade knife, and a separate bag stuffed with ammunition. Tools recovered from Allen after the incident, including pliers and wire cutters, are also visible on his person in the self-portraits. The photos were timestamped at approximately 8:03 p.m. EST, court records show.
Prosecutors’ timeline lays out the 30-minute window of activity after Allen took the pre-attack photos. During that period, they allege, Allen repeatedly browsed online media outlets to confirm live coverage of the annual dinner and verify that Trump was in attendance at the event. Once he confirmed the former president’s presence, he left his hotel room and walked toward the Washington Hilton ballroom where hundreds of journalists, political figures, and administration officials had gathered. Before approaching the venue’s security checkpoint, prosecutors say Allen discarded a long black overcoat he had used to conceal his pump-action shotgun.
“Shortly thereafter, the defendant rushed the screening checkpoint on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton with a raised shotgun,” the memorandum states. Official accounts confirm Allen sprinted through a activated metal detector, holding the shotgun in a two-handed raised firing position as he advanced into the secured event space. A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the detail was shot during the subsequent confrontation, though their wound was not life-threatening and they have since been reported to be in stable condition.
The court filing also sheds new light on the weeks-long lead-up to the alleged attack. Investigators confirm Allen left his home in Torrance, a Los Angeles suburb, on April 21, traveling cross-country by train via Chicago before arriving in the nation’s capital. During his journey, Allen kept a handwritten note on his cell phone documenting his observations of the landscape, including a line describing “the southwest desert in spring [with] Distant wind turbines looming like snowy mountains across the hazy NM desert”.
In a chilling pre-attack communication sent to his own family shortly before he stormed the dinner, Allen allegedly spelled out his targeting priorities, writing that “Administration officials… are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest”. He added that he “would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary”, according to an earlier affidavit filed in the case.
If convicted on the top charge of attempted assassination of the U.S. president, Allen faces a potential life sentence. Two additional charges—transporting a firearm across state lines to commit a felony, and discharging a firearm during a violent crime—each carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence. In their motion to deny bail, prosecutors emphasized that Allen’s alleged actions were “premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death”. They added that no set of release conditions could reasonably guarantee the safety of the public or other community members if Allen were freed from custody ahead of his trial. At the time of reporting, Allen remains in federal custody, with no trial date yet set.