Recently uncovered footage reveals a contrasting image of the man accused of attempting to forcefully enter a press event with the intent to harm President Donald Trump.
This decade-old video, accessed by Fox News Digital, features 31-year-old Cole Allen at an “Aging into the Future” conference in Los Angeles, co-hosted by St. Barnabas Senior Services. Allen is seen showcasing an emergency brake prototype for wheelchairs, crafted from basic PVC piping. While his invention was presented among other innovators, engineering experts noted that it didn’t demonstrate particularly advanced skills for a senior student at Caltech.
However, this video offers a starkly different view from the image of an enraged extremist, who allegedly attempted to breach the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW in a shocking scheme aimed at Trump administration figures during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Allen’s portrayal in the video contrasts sharply with the details emerging from law enforcement interviews with his siblings and his own writings in a manifesto.
Commenting on past assassination attempts, Trump remarked to Fox News on Sunday, “These assassins often have high IQs, but they are insane.”
The FBI has now pinpointed Allen as the suspect behind Saturday night’s shooting at the Washington Hilton. His brother informed the authorities that Allen’s manifesto allegedly outlined lethal plans intended for the weekend’s gathering of journalists and government officials.
Trump told Fox News, “The guy is a sick guy. When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians. That’s one thing for sure. He hates Christians, a hatred.”
Trump said Allen’s family raised alarm bells with law enforcement.
“He was a very troubled guy,” he said, later also calling him “disturbed.”
According to law enforcement officials, Allen also descended into anti-Trump hate, attending at least one of the three “No Kings” protests organized over the past year by groups including Democratic-leaning nonprofits, like Indivisible, MoveOn and American Federation of Teachers, and a network of socialist organizations, including the People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition, funded by an American tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, living in Shanghai.
Cole Allen, the suspect in the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, speaks to ABC7 Los Angeles in 2017 about an invention he created for wheelchairs as a student at the California Institute of Technology. (KABC)
Almost a decade ago, Allen appeared to have very different priorities.
In a news segment published in March 2017 by WABC in Los Angeles, Allen appears as a disciplined student at the California Institute of Technology, an elite institution known for admitting students with near-perfect test scores and training top-tier engineers and scientists.
Speaking in a flat, measured tone with flat affect, Allen walked a reporter through the mechanics of his device, explaining how it could stabilize a wheelchair and prevent it from skidding. “The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels but don’t actually lock the chair to the ground,” he explained.
Cole Allen demonstrates how his wheelchair invention works during an interview with ABC7 Los Angeles in March 2017. (KABC)
Kneeling beside the wheels of a wheelchair and fiddling with an assembly of QVC pipes between the wheels, he continued, “The deal with this is to prevent it from moving at all.”
That year, Allen earned a mechanical engineering degree. While in college, he completed a competitive summer research fellowship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contributing to astrophysics work, according to his LInkedIn profile. He also developed technical projects, including a physics-based role-playing shooter game called “First Law,” as well as robotic systems and later another game, “Bohrdom,” released on the Steam platform. Gaming experts said his “Bohrdom” game was very basic in its technical level.
After Caltech, Allen held down a job for only about a year before starting work as a tutor with C2 Education in 2020 and going on to earn a master’s degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2025. C2 Education recognized Allen a “teacher of the month” in late 2024, according to a social media post.
Cole Allen in a graduation gown taken on an unknown date. (L) A suspect lies face down on the floor as law enforcement officers detain him following a security incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2026. (Cole Allen/LinkedIn; @realDonaldTrump via Truth Social)
Records also show a small political donation during the 2024 election cycle to the Kamala Harris presidential race.
Allen now faces federal charges including using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer, with additional charges expected.
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