Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNNâs Dana Bash on Sunday that the alleged gunman who allegedly tried to force his way past a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondentsâ 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 âState of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash,â 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.
âIs he talking to law enforcement or is this information that you got through other means?â Bash asked Blanche.
âItâs information we primarily got from other means, so weâve already started talking to folks who knew him, weâve already started going through the evidence that we collected,â the acting attorney general responded. âItâs been 12 hours, so this is not something that is over. Itâs just starting, but thatâs where we are this morning.â
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âIs he talking?â Bash followed up.
âNo ⌠I expect heâll be charged tomorrow morning in federal court with two counts in a complaint,â Blanche replied. âWe are not viewing him as cooperating right necessarily now, although weâll see what happens going forward.â
The CNN host then asked Blanche if âis possibleâ the suspect could be later âcharged with trying to assassinateâ President Donald Trump.
âAbsolutely,â the acting attorney general replied. âThe 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.â
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 âfought like hellâ for the event to go on after the incident, but that the Secret Service invoked âprotocol.â
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 âmassive security failureâ due to the alleged gunmanâs charging through a checkpoint, Blanche instead praised the Secret Serviceâs response to the incident, dubbing it a âmassive security success story.â
âI 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 donât belong from getting in,â he said.
âThis man, from what we know from video surveillance and from witnesses who were there, barely got past the perimeter,â Blanche continued. âHe was immediately subdued.â
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