Everything we know about Cole Allen, the D.C. correspondents dinner shooter

The annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was derailed Saturday night after an armed man, Cole Allen, rushed through a security checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement.

The suspected gunman was apprehended at the scene and is expected to be arraigned on Monday. One law enforcement agent was shot but not seriously injured, and all Trump administration officials and lawmakers were safely evacuated. No injuries were reported among the attendees.

After the incident, President Donald Trump — who was attending his first White House Correspondents’ Dinner as president — requested that the event be rescheduled. While the dinner was initially set to proceed, it was canceled because law enforcement deemed the venue an active crime scene.

Here’s what we know about Allen:

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the suspected shooter was likely targeting administration officials during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“It does appear the suspect was targeting members of the administration,” Blanche said, noting that authorities are still “looking to try to understand a motive from our preliminary investigation.”

Blanche said it is unclear whether the shooter was targeting “particular members” of the administration, only that “we do understand that that was his goal and his target.”

Blanche said Allen, of Torrance, California, traveled by train from “Los Angeles to Chicago, then Chicago to D.C.”

Allen was booked at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was being held, and Blanche said he checked in on Friday.

Blanche said the suspect is not cooperating with authorities, and officials have obtained most of the information about him “from other means.”

“We’ve already started talking to folks who knew him, we’ve already started going through the evidence that we collected,” he said.

Allen was a teacher at C2 Education, a tutoring, test prep and college admissions counseling provider, according to his LinkedIn profile.

C2, in a statement to CNBC, said they “were shocked to hear the news of the horrifying incident that transpired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”

“We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer,” the company said.

His LinkedIn profile shows he graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and from California State University, Dominguez Hills, with a master’s degree in computer science.

Allen allegedly wrote a detailed letter about his plans, the contents of which were obtained by the New York Post.

In the note published by the Post, Allen allegedly said he is “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

Allen refers to himself as the “friendly federal assassin” in the letter.

The suspected shooter also noted that the security at the event and the Washington Hilton was lighter than he expected, a caveat that many elected officials and attendees have also noted.

Oversight briefings are now expected on Capitol Hill in response to the shooting, which is the third attempt on Trump’s life since 2024.

A spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told MS NOW that the U.S. Secret Service is scheduling a bipartisan briefing on “security protocols and related law enforcement matters involving the White House Correspondents Dinner.”

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi told MS NOW the suspect’s brother contacted the New London, Connecticut, police department about the letters, who then contacted the Secret Service. The Secret Service learned of the letters sometime between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET on Saturday.

Blanche said on Sunday that there’s “not any indication yet” that Allen was on law enforcement’s radar.

“We’re still investigating what we knew, if anything, about this individual,” he said.

Blanche said Allen purchased “the two firearms that he had on him” within the past two years, and that he had “knives on him as well.”

Despite the apparent security breach and widespread remarks about unusually lax security at the event, Blanche said he is “overly confident that the Secret Service did their job here.”

Allen “barely got past the perimeter, he was immediately subdued … This is law enforcement doing exactly what they’ve trained their whole lives to do.”

— CNBC’s Ryan Ruggiero contributed to this report

CORRECTION: Republican Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa told MS NOW that the U.S. Secret Service is scheduling a briefing on security protocols and law enforcement matters involving the White House Correspondents Dinner. An earlier version misstated Grassley.