Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that the alleged gunman who allegedly tried to force his way past a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was not cooperating with authorities.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced late Saturday night that Cole Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, had been charged with using a firearm in a violent crime and assaulting a federal officer. On “State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash,” Bash asked Blanche how the Department of Justice had gathered information on Allen, who had told authorities he was targeting Trump administration officials, according to the New York Post.
“Is he talking to law enforcement or is this information that you got through other means?” Bash asked Blanche.
“It’s information we primarily got from other means, so we’ve already started talking to folks who knew him, we’ve already started going through the evidence that we collected,” the acting attorney general responded. “It’s been 12 hours, so this is not something that is over. It’s just starting, but that’s where we are this morning.”
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“Is he talking?” Bash followed up.
“No … I expect he’ll be charged tomorrow morning in federal court with two counts in a complaint,” Blanche replied. “We are not viewing him as cooperating right necessarily now, although we’ll see what happens going forward.”
The CNN host then asked Blanche if “is possible” the suspect could be later “charged with trying to assassinate” President Donald Trump.
“Absolutely,” the acting attorney general replied. “The way that these charges work, a lot of the charges he could be charged with depends on us understanding his motive, his premeditation, what he wanted to do. And that requires us to go through the evidence and develop a case which the FBI is working on now.”
Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and other senior administration officials off the stage of the dinner being held at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night after the exchange of gunfire. Trump told reporters during a press conference at the White House that he “fought like hell” for the event to go on after the incident, but that the Secret Service invoked “protocol.”
In a separate Sunday appearance on NBC, Blanche said that officials believed members of the Trump administration were being targeted by Allen, Bloomberg Chief Political Correspondent Annemarie Hordern posted on X Sunday. Allen had boosted posts on the left-wing social network BlueSky calling for Trump to be tried for high crimes, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
When Bash had asked him if the night was a “massive security failure” due to the alleged gunman’s charging through a checkpoint, Blanche instead praised the Secret Service’s response to the incident, dubbing it a “massive security success story.”
“I mean if you think about what happened as far as what we know right now, this suspect barely breached the perimeter, and so when you have a perimeter of a situation like we had last night where you had over 2,000 people in a room, including the leaders of this country and many other dignitaries, you have a perimeter where you have law enforcement willing to risk their lives to keep to keep people who don’t belong from getting in,” he said.
“This man, from what we know from video surveillance and from witnesses who were there, barely got past the perimeter,” Blanche continued. “He was immediately subdued.”
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