The alleged gunman behind the third assassination attempt on Donald Trump mocked the “insane” lack of security at the event, it has emerged.
Around 10 minutes before Cole Allen, a teacher from California, opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday evening, he sent an anti-Trump manifesto to his family, describing his surprise at the “level of incompetence” at the venue.
The 31-year-old, armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives, stormed a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton hotel and came within 90m of the US President.
In the message, he said Iranian assassins could have turned up with a machine gun to the event and “no one would have noticed s---”.
The Secret Service is under pressure to explain how a gunman managed to get so close to the high table where the President, the First Lady and senior Cabinet figures were seated before he was stopped.
The Trump administration reportedly provided a lower level of security for the event than it usually would for such a large number of government officials in one room.
With Trump and JD Vance, the Vice-President, the event hosted Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, and Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary.
Under normal circumstances, with such a large number of officials in one room, the Secretary of Homeland Security usually puts the Secret Service in charge of an event, coordinating all security through a formal designation known as the “National Special Security Event”.
No such security was in place at the dinner, officials told The Washington Post, leaving government leaders and thousands of reporters unusually vulnerable to attack.
One Washington government official told The Washington Post that they were not aware of when the event had previously been designated as a National Special Security Event. Event organisers said that no discussion about added security had “ever come up in the past”.
The Secret Service said that it was only charged with protecting the ballroom and the area around it, officials told the Post, and did not take responsibility for the security of the rest of the hotel.
Trump claimed the security breach “would never have happened” if he had his own “militarily top secret ballroom” in the White House.
“It cannot be built fast enough,” he wrote on his Truth Social the morning after the attempted attack. “While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the world.”
The President wants to construct a 90,000sq ft ballroom that could host up to 1000 people – at a cost of $250m ($422m) – enabling him and future leaders to host state dinners inside rather than setting up a marquee on the lawn of the White House.
The Trump administration has already taken a wrecking ball to the East Wing, leaving a gaping hole of twisted metal, to make room for the function space.
This is despite the construction having been deemed unlawful: Trump’s plans have not been approved by Congress and a judge has repeatedly stated that the President does not have authority to make massive structural changes to the government building.
On Sunday night, the US Department of Justice again urged the National Trust for Historic Preservation to end its lawsuit challenging the ballroom plans.
Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney-General, said the ballroom would “ensure the safety and security of the President for decades to come and prevent future assassination attempts”.
While Republicans seized on the opportunity to rally support for Trump’s ballroom plans, elsewhere the focus remained on how a would-be assassin managed to come so close to the President at the gala.
Allen is understood to have been a guest at the hotel and had checked in the day before and assembled his guns on-site.
He had called himself a “friendly federal assassin” and revealed that he intended to target US administration officials over their ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the Iran war and immigration policies.
Seemingly referring to Trump, Allen wrote: “I am no longer willing to permit a paedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Of the alleged lack of security, Allen said: “Apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.” He added that he simply “walked in with multiple weapons” and no one considered him “a threat”.
“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.
Trump later described him as a “lone wolf whack job”, adding: “These are crazy people.”
Blanche said Trump was “likely” a target, with other senior members of the administration, but added that the investigation was in its early stages.
The alleged manifesto was given to police by Allen’s brother, The New York Post reported. It was signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen”.
Allen’s only known political activity was a US$25 donation to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in October 2024, but he had registered to vote in California as having “no party preference”.
His sister said he had become more politically radical and told her he would do “something” to fix the world’s issues, The New York Post reported, citing a US official.
“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,” he wrote.
“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 behaviour; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
Police said the shooter’s motive remained unclear. Asked about it on Sunday, Trump said Allen was a “very troubled guy” who “hates Christians”.
The President told Fox News: “The guy was a sick guy when you read his manifesto. It was a religious thing. It was strongly anti-Christian.”
Trump became irate when he was questioned about the part of the gunman’s letter which read: “I am no longer willing to permit a paedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
In a heated exchange during a 60 Minutes television show, he called a reporter a “disgrace” and declared “I’m not a paedophile” and “I’m not a rapist”.
Allen sent an anti-Trump manifesto to his family 10 minutes before breaching a security checkpoint at the hotel, saying “administration officials, they are targets”.
Officials said that Allen, of Torrance, California, had no criminal record and was not on the radar of law enforcement. Police searched his home in a Los Angeles suburb on Sunday morning as helicopters circled overhead.
A neighbour, James Costello, 53, told The New York Times the neighbourhood was “quiet” and home to many retired police officers. “That’s why we moved here. We were told it was super-super safe,” he added.
Allen was charged with using a firearm during a violent crime and assault of a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, with further charges expected.
Investigators said the suspect took a train from Los Angeles to Washington, via Chicago, and checked into the Washington Hilton a day or two before the event.
The hotel, which is more than a mile from the White House, is where Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
In the alleged manifesto, Allen apologised to his parents and colleagues for abusing their trust, and to those in the hotel whom he “put in danger”, adding that he did not expect forgiveness.
He concluded the note with the advice: “Stay in school, kids… If anyone is curious is how doing something like feels [sic]: it’s awful.”
Allen regularly went to a shooting range to train with his multiple guns and was part of a group called “The Wide Awakes”, a historic youth-led political movement that was set up to end slavery, NBC News reported.
He also allegedly attended a “No Kings” anti-Trump protest in California, where he attended university, studied for a masters in computer engineering and later worked as a teacher.
A LinkedIn profile stated that he was a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth”.
It listed him as working as a part-time teacher for C2 Education, which specialises in college test preparation and tutoring, from 2020. In December 2024, the company named him its “teacher of the month”.
A former volleyball teammate at Pacific Lutheran High School in Gardena, California, which Allen attended, described him as a “borderline genius” and “super stable”.
“Other people study hard,” the former teammate told NBC News. “He didn’t have to study. It would just come to him. He was really, really smart.”
He was also a member of the Caltech Christian Fellowship and the Caltech Nerf Club, which describes itself as a “group of people who raid random buildings on campus and shoot Nerf guns at each other”.
Allen’s LinkedIn also stated he was involved in a game called First Law, which he described as “a top-down shooter” game.
Trump praised the Secret Service for tackling the gunman, who he said had not been close to breaching the ballroom where he had been sitting onstage.
He said: “I saw a room that was just totally unified. It was, in one way, very beautiful, a very beautiful thing.
“To see a man charge a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons, and he was taken down by some very brave members of Secret Service, and they acted very quickly.”
The President added: “It is always shocking when something like this happens.”
Muriel Bowser, the Mayor of Washington, said she had “no reason” to believe anyone else had been involved in the shooting.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Sunday that what was supposed to be a “fun night” had been “hijacked by a depraved, crazy person who sought to assassinate the President and kill as many top Trump administration officials as possible”.
“This political violence needs to end.”
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