WASHINGTON — Accused White House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman Cole Allen sent a chilling anti-President Trump manifesto to his family just before opening fire — calling himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and revealing he was hell-bent on killing Trump administration officials, The Post has learned.
Allen wrote that his “targets” were “Administration officials (not including [FBI Director Kash] Patel)… prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest” in the unhinged missive that went out about 10 minutes before the shooting Saturday night, two US officials said.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Allen wrote, apparently referring to the president.
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“In order to minimize casualties, I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls),” he wrote before disturbingly admitting he was willing to kill everyone in the room if it meant getting to his targets.
“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Allen referred to his Christian faith several times in the document within a list of “rebuttals” to imagined objections to his actions. He also made mention of hot-button political issues like the Trump administration’s strikes on Venezuelan drug boats and the detention of illegal migrants.
“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial,” Allen wrote in the deranged document, which a relative provided to police, officials said.
“I’m not a schoolkid blown up, or a child starved, or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said investigators believe he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, via Chicago, which he speculated could have been an attempt to avoid the scrutiny associated with air travel.
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Allen mocked the “insane” lack of security at the Washington Hilton when he arrived armed to the teeth without so much as a sideways glance.
“Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” he said of the assembled security.
“The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before. Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.”
He added: “Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed s–t,” invoking a nickname for the M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun. “Actually insane.”
Allen’s brother notified the New London, Conn., police department about the manifesto, two officials told The Post.
The document was signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.”
One official told The Post that the Secret Service has interviewed Allen’s sister, who lives in Rockville, Md., and learned he often made politically radical remarks and spoke of doing “something” to fix the world’s issues.
Federal Election Commission records show that he made a onetime $25 donation to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign in October 2024.
He also displayed a sign for a local Democrat-backed judge in his front lawn.
Allen was subdued and arrested after exchanging gunfire with agents.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said the suspect is expected to be charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault of a federal officer when he appears in court Monday.
Authorities confirmed that Allen bought two handguns and a shotgun at Cap Tactical Firearms and stored them at his parents’ home. He regularly trained at a shooting range, the official said.
He was part of a group called “The Wide Awakes,” officials said, and is believed to have attended a “No Kings” protest in California, where he graduated from college and worked as a teacher.
The Wide Awakes were a Civil War-era youth politics organization that aligned with many of the beliefs of the Republican Party of the era, including opposition to slavery.
Allen was employed by C2 Education, a tutor and test prep company. He was named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024, according to social media posts.
He graduated from Cal Tech with an engineering degree in 2017 and earned a master’s in computer science.
The reason for Allen’s omission of the FBI director from his list of targets was not immediately clear, though he wrote that law enforcement would be shot “only if necessary.” One officer was wounded in the attack.
Capping off the manifesto, which reads at times like a suicide note, he offers a peek into his frame of mind as he readied himself to storm the gala.
“Oh, and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels: it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”
