Cole Tomas Allen, the man suspected of sprinting past security at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., last month, pleaded not guilty to accusations of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump and other counts.
Allen was arraigned Monday in federal court in Washington, DC. Allen, prosecutors said, approached the hotel where the correspondents’ dinner was being held armed with a shotgun on April 26 while the president and other government officials were on a different floor.
Allen’s lawyers are attempting to have the two top prosecutors off his case, arguing they will be too biased given they were at the political soiree where he tried to kill President Trump.
Lawyers for Allen – who is charged with crashing the April 25 event armed with two guns and knives – contend the fact that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro were both at the WHCD indicates they have a conflict in prosecuting the case.
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President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and top Trump cabinet members were removed from dinner when Allen tried to get through a security checkpoint one floor up.
Allen, 31, a teacher in Torrance,Calif., shot and hit a Secret Service man who was protected by their bullet proof vest. The agent shot back but didn’t hit Allen.
Both Blanche and Pirro heard gunshots, likely ducking behind the tables along with the rest of the attendees, the complaint claims. They were evacuated quickly.”
“Both were potential victims and targets in what they have described as an attempted ‘mass shooting,” the court papers claim.
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Pirro even posted to her X account about the harrowing incident roughly 30 utes after the melee, saying: “I’ve been taken out of the ballroom after the sounds of shots fired.”
Blanche and Pirro’s involvement in Allen’s case presents “grave concerns about whether they are making prosecutorial decisions as representatives of the government or as witnesses,” the docs claim.
Beyond the fact that Pirro was there, she’s also a supposed 30-year friend and loyalist of Trump — who she says was Allen’s original target of the attack.
That’s because, according to the filings, even if a judge doesn’t determine the two prosecutors don’t have a conflict they’d still need to be disqualified from the case because of the “appearance of such a conflict.”
Allen was indicted Tuesday and has not been arraigned.
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He was in court Monday for a hearing on the extraordinarily tight restrictions he was supposedly being unnecessarily subjected to in jail.
Magristrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui told Allen he was in what amounted to 24-hour lockdown on suicide watch, despite his lawyers saying he didn’t pose a risk to himself.
Pirro blasted Faruqui’s comments on X, saying the judge thought Allen deserved “preferential treatment.”
Allen’s lawyers claimed Pirro’s “emotional response was inflammatory, inappropriate, and inaccurate” showing “the depths of her personal interest in this case.”
Pirro said in a statement, “We will evaluate the motion and respond in court. We will not tolerate people who come to the District of Columbia to engage in antidemocratic acts of political violence; and we will prosecute all such acts to the fullest extent of the law.”
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The case against Allen has already had wild moments in the courtroom.
A federal magistrate judge sharply criticized the treatment of a man accused of attempting an attack at a high-profile Washington event, apologizing in court and warning that the conditions of his detention may violate basic legal standards.
During a hearing last week, Zia Faruqui addressed defendant Cole Allen directly, saying the court has a responsibility to ensure that individuals held before trial are treated in a manner that is both safe and consistent with the law.
Faruqui said he did not believe that standard had been met in Allen’s case.
He went further, offering an apology to Allen for the conditions he had faced while in custody.
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