31-year-old Torrance man Cole Thomas Allen was accused of trying to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association last weekend. Supper remains in federal prison pending trial.
Allen agreed to his continued detention during a brief hearing in federal court in Washington, DC, on Thursday. “He is accepting house arrest at this time,” Tejira Abe, one of his federal public defenders, told Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya. According to CNBC.
He did not file any plea during the hearing, According to the Associated Press.
Abe and Allen’s other public defender, Eugene Ohm, argued in a filing Wednesday for Allen’s pre-trial release, citing his criminal record, lack of family support and ties to his church, as well as inconsistencies and weaknesses in the government’s case against him.
Abe and Om did not respond to requests for comment after the hearing.
In addition to trying to kill Trump, a terrorism-related charge that carries a possible life sentence, Allen faces two firearms charges related to allegedly carrying two guns across state lines while traveling from California to Washington by Amtrak train and destroying one of those firearms – a shotgun – during the incident.
Arguing for Allen’s release in their Wednesday filing, his lawyers not only emphasized that he poses no threat to the community, but also questioned the government’s reasoning and evidence for the charges against him.
Allen was captured on a hotel video camera running away from U.S. Secret Service agents into a secure venue one floor above the dinner, while armed with a shotgun, a pistol and various knives, according to prosecutors. He then fell to the ground and was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.
Trump administration officials were present at the dinner, including Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and D.C.’s U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro swiftly brought charges against him — leaning heavily on an email Allen sent the family because he was violating security of the event, which Trump and others referred to as a “manifesto” but which was titled “Apology and Explanation.”
In that document, Allen reportedly wrote that he was targeting top Trump administration officials, with the highest-ranking officials receiving the highest priority. He reportedly wrote that he would go through other people at the event to reach those officers, but that he was not targeting guests or hotel staff and had chosen buck shot instead of slugs to “minimize casualties” in the room.
According to the charging documents, the charge of attempting to assassinate the President largely hung on that document.
Blanch and Pirro also alleged that Allen opened fire during a gunfight with Secret Service agents, in which they said a Secret Service agent was shot in a ballistic vest. Prosecutors also alleged in court that Allen had fired his gun, noting the recovery of an spent shell casing, but made no mention of shooting a Secret Service officer in the vest.
That alleged bullet served as the basis for one count of discharging a firearm.
In their plea for Allen’s release, his lawyers questioned the validity of both arguments.
He wrote that the “only evidence offered” by the government of Allen’s intent to kill Trump – the “apology and explanation” letter – was “far from clear” and never actually mentioned Trump by name.
Allen’s lawyers wrote, “The Government’s evidence regarding the crime charged – the attempted assassination of the President – ​​is based entirely on speculation, even under the most generous reading of its theory.” “While the government may be able to say that the letter expresses an intent to target administration officials, it falls far short of limiting those officials to President Trump.”
Regarding one count of discharging a firearm, Allen’s lawyers wrote that the government “does not claim that Mr. Allen ever fired any of the recovered weapons.” He wrote that the government, “after essentially stating that Mr. Allen shot a Secret Service officer in the criminal complaint, has clearly departed from principle by not explicitly mentioning the alleged officer” in arguing in its filing for Allen’s ongoing detention.
In a later document, prosecutors wrote only that an officer saw Allen fire his firearm “in the direction of the stairs leading to the ballroom.” However, he provided little evidence to support that claim, except that there was a spent cartridge in the barrel of the firearm.
“Overall,” Allen’s lawyers wrote, “the government’s entire argument about the nature and circumstances of the crime is based on conclusions drawn about Mr. Allen’s intent that raise more questions than it answers.”
Prosecutors rejected the defense’s claims in a separate filing in the case related to evidence gathering.
“Preliminary analysis of the crime scene is consistent with the Government’s evidence that your client fired at least one shot from a 12-gauge pump action shotgun in the direction of Officer Weegee, and Officer Weegee fired five times from his service weapon,” he wrote. “The Government is aware that no evidence has so far been collected or analyzed that is inconsistent with the above.”
He wrote that the evidence showed that Allen had fired his Mossberg 12-gauge pump-action shotgun “at least once while running after the magnetometer on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton.”
He wrote that investigators recovered a spent cartridge from the chamber of the firearm, that “the Government’s preliminary ballistics and video analysis indicates that your client fired in the direction of his firearm”, the Secret Service officer was identified only as “VG”, and that “at least one fragment was recovered from the crime scene that was physically consistent with a single buckshot bullet.”
