Cole Allen, identified as the suspect in the shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, will remain in custody. This decision came after a detention hearing on Thursday, during which federal prosecutors presented additional video evidence related to the attack.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., shared a video nearly six minutes long on social media. She explained that the footage depicted Allen surveying the vicinity of the Hilton Hotel a day before the event on April 25.
The video captures a man strolling down a corridor and entering a gym on the evening of April 24, suggesting a premeditated action.
Further clips from the night of the dinner show a man traversing the same hallway and then forcefully passing through a Secret Service security checkpoint. During this confrontation, a Secret Service agent was shot, though fortunately, the bullet was stopped by the agent’s protective vest.
Pirro emphasized that the footage, which includes slow-motion segments, clearly shows Allen firing at a Secret Service officer.
She firmly stated, “There is no evidence to suggest that the shooting was due to friendly fire.”
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea.
In an overnight court filing, Allen’s attorneys questioned what evidence the government has to determine Allen fired his weapon.
Prosecutors have said in documents that Allen fired the shotgun at least once as he ran past the magnetometers, and they said he fired “in the direction” of the Secret Service officer who was struck in the vest. Prosecutors said one spent cartridge case was recovered from the chamber and “at least one fragment was recovered from the crime scene that was physically consistent with a single buckshot pellet.”
Allen shot a Secret Service officer at “point blank range with a shotgun,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in an appearance on Fox News on Thursday afternoon.
“All the evidence I have seen, the suspect shot our officer point-blank range with a shotgun. Our officer heroically returned fire while being shot point-blank range in the chest with a shotgun and was able to get all five shots,” Curran said.
Pirro told Fox News earlier on Thursday, “We know [Allen] fired off that 12-gauge shotgun one time.”
She said “the Secret Service officer fired his weapon five times” and she added that the agent did not shoot himself.
Pirro said Allen will face additional charges. She also said investigators are searching for anyone he might’ve threatened by name.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway.
During his detention hearing on Thursday, Allen conceded to remain detained pending further legal proceedings in his case, his attorney said. Allen, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, appeared calm and did not speak during the hearing. He is set to return to court on May 11.
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Allen’s Thursday court appearance came a day after federal prosecutors filed a detention memo, supporting their request for a judge to hold the defendant in custody pending trial.
“The defendant attempted to kill the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The crimes with which the defendant is charged are among the most serious in the United States Code, and the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming,” prosecutors wrote.
Under what prosecutors titled in court records as “The Defendant’s Assassination Plan,” prosecutors cited his writings in which he allegedly laid out his plan to target top members of the Trump administration, according to the memo.
The suspect also sent a prescheduled email to his employer minutes before launching the attack, in which he allegedly apologized for his “unprofessionality [sic],” according to a pretrial detention memo prosecutors filed in federal court on Wednesday.
“Consider me to be submitting my resignation effective immediately (if it matters.),” Cole allegedly wrote in the email, according to the memo.
The tutoring company C2 Education, where Allen purportedly worked, said they are cooperating “fully” with law enforcement and denounced the “horrifying incident” at the correspondents’ Dinner, but omitted details of Allen’s work history.
“We were shocked to hear the news of the horrifying incident that transpired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” the tutoring company said in a statement on Sunday. “We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer.”
Retired FBI Agent and ABC News contributor Brad Garrett said that in his decades of investigating major crimes, he could not recall another suspect submitting a job resignation letter in a screed.
Garrett, however, said he was not surprised the suspect submitted his notice. He said the resignation notice suggests it fits in with the “parallel personality” of someone who has led a responsible life, yet can also exhibit another side in which they are filled with anger and rage.
“It’s fairly common in the writings of mass shooters to apologize to people. The idea that you are telling your employer that you’re formally quitting kind of fits into that to a certain extent,” Garrett said.
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
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