(AFP) – The man accused of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump took a selfie in his hotel room moments before bursting through security with a pump-action shotgun, prosecutors said Wednesday. Cole Allen launched his attack just after 8:30 pm on Saturday, descending from his room at a Washington Hilton, then trying to get into the basement ballroom where Trump and other senior officials had joined a media gala dinner, prosecutors said. The 31-year-old was tackled and detained in a chaotic scuffle with security guards. Shots were fired but no one was killed.
According to prosecutors, Allen spent his last minutes checking websites that covered Trump’s whereabouts, arming himself, and posing for a selfie taken with a cellphone in the mirror of his room. A copy of the photo showed him dressed in black, with a red tie, and carrying a knife, a shoulder holster for a handgun and what authorities said was a bag for ammunition. As he left his room, scheduled emails went out to friends and family with a manifesto explaining his actions.
The details of Allen’s alleged preparations for what prosecutors called an attack of “unfathomable malice” emerged in a filing asking a Washington federal court to deny bail. “The court should detain the defendant pending trial,” the filing said. “The political nature of the defendant’s crimes further counsels in favor of detention because the defendant’s motivation for committing the crimes exists so long as he disagrees” with the government.
Allen is a highly educated teacher from California. Prosecutors say he made the journey to Washington — carrying an arsenal that included the shotgun, a handgun and numerous knives — by a famously scenic train route via Chicago. Along the way, the filing said, Allen recorded his appreciation for the changing landscapes, for example writing on his phone that Pennsylvania’s woods resembled “vast fairy lands filled with tiny trickling creeks.”
Once in his Hilton room, he wrote of surprise at what he thought was the lax security in the hotel, saying he had walked in “with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.” In the email to friends and family, he allegedly listed his targets as members of the Trump administration “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” He said he hoped not to kill Secret Service bodyguards or other law enforcement or hotel guests.
According to the court filing, Cole discarded his long coat once he reached the hotel entrance area and sprinted through one set of metal detectors, his shotgun at the ready. Cole allegedly fired the shotgun “in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom.” A Secret Service agent then fired five times, but did not hit Cole, who fell and was then restrained. “The defendant suffered a minor injury to his knee but was not shot,” the filing said.
It was the third alleged assassination attempt against Trump in less than two years. The White House has blamed Democratic politicians and the media for inciting extremism, but Trump, 79, has broken multiple Washington precedents with his violent rhetoric against opponents, journalists, foreign leaders and immigrants.
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