The would-be shooter who attacked at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner revealed that he was willing to kill everyone in the room.
“I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” Cole Tomas Allen wrote in the 1,000-word document, arguing that the potential mass casualty event was justifiable “on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor” — a reference to President Donald Trump — and “are thus complicit.”
Around 2,500 people were in attendance at the event, including the president, Vice President JD Vance, several Cabinet secretaries and members of congressional leadership, as well as journalists, media personalities, and guests. In his manifesto, Allen wrote that he only considered members of the Trump administration — with the exception of FBI Director Kash Patel, for reasons unknown — fair targets.
Allen wrote that he would only shoot Secret Service, Capitol Police, and hotel security if they shot him first, and pledged not to engage with other workers or guests. However, Allen said he “would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets” because he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Allen explained that he chose “buckshot rather than slugs” in an effort to reduce collateral damage by mitigating “penetration through walls.”
In the manifesto, Allen describes himself as a Christian, and notes that a possible objection to his actions is that “As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.” He then offers a rebuttal, noting “Turning the other check is for when you yourself are oppressed. Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
Another possible objection he lists is “yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” a reference to Jesus’s dictum that Christians must obey worldly authorities — and another seeming implication that Allen conceived of his attack in religious terms. Allen appeared to be a member of Christian groups and clubs during his time at Cal-Tech. His father is an elder at the Grace United Reformed Church in California, The Daily Wire reported.
Acknowledging that his manifesto might be his last words to family and friends, he writes, “I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again unless the Secret Service is *astoundingly* incompetent,” he says, before going on criticize security.
“This level of incompetence is insane,” he writes. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat. The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”
Allen sent the manifesto to relatives 10 minutes before he attacked. He closed the missive with a reflection on the unpleasantness of presidential assassination.
“I want to throw up,” Allen writes. “I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”
He signed the manifesto “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen.’
