The suspected White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter mocked the lack of security at the event and on his journey to Washington in a manifesto.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a teacher from Torrance, California, was seen attempting to bolt past a security checkpoint while armed with a shotgun, a handgun and several knives on Saturday night.
He exchanged fire with Secret Service agents before they tackled him to the ground and arrested him. One agent was struck in his bulletproof vest and is expected to recover. No one else was harmed.
Allen’s manifesto, which was obtained and published in full by the New York Post, detailed his reasoning for the attack, his ‘rules of engagement’ and a ‘rant’ about how little security he encountered.
‘What the hell is the Secret Service doing?’ Allen wrote in a post script to his manifesto.
‘I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing,’ he continued.
The radicalized teacher described a ‘sense of arrogance’ at the Washington Hilton Hotel, where the dinner was held.
‘The security at the event is all outside… because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before,’ Allen wrote.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a teacher from Torrance, California, is the suspected shooter of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He mocked the event’s lack of security in his manifesto
Secret Service agents were seen with their guns drawn as they gave people orders
Allen is seen after he was tackled to the ground and handcuffed by authorities
He said that the security was so lacking that, ‘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 shit.’
Ma Deuce is a nickname for the M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun.
Earlier in his manifesto, Allen explained why he had attempted to break into the dinner and kill top Trump administration officials.
‘I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,’ he wrote, likely in reference to President Donald Trump. He said that as a citizen of the US, what his representatives do reflects on him.
The suspected shooter added that he had wanted to take action for a long time, ‘but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.’
He then went on to explain his ‘rules of engagement’ and outlined who his targets were.
‘Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,’ Allen wrote. It is unclear why Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, was spared from his hit list.
Allen then listed other targets in order of priority. He wrote that Secret Service agents who get in his way were ‘targets only if necessary,’ and that he hoped to incapacitate them ‘non-lethally if possible.’
‘I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who *aren’t*,’ he wrote. Allen did later shoot one Secret Service agent in a bulletproof vest.
He also wrote that hotel security, capitol police and national guardsmen would only be targets if they shot at him first.
This is a developing story. More to follow
