A left-leaning Bluesky user appeared to warn alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman Cole Allen in February 2025 that his disdain for President Donald Trump entered “mental illness territory.”
Law enforcement is reportedly reviewing the now-banned Bluesky account “ColdForce” over its likely ties to Allen, who is charged with opening fire at the Saturday event in an effort to kill Trump. The anti-Trump account displayed matching personal details, including educational background and the same name Allen allegedly used in a pre-attack manifesto, according to archived posts the Daily Caller News Foundation reviewed.
“I know from my investigation that ALLEN used the moniker ‘cold force’ in multiple online accounts associated with him,” an FBI agent wrote in a Monday affidavit. The Bluesky user with that name echoed years of mainstream liberal rhetoric, calling Trump a Russian “agent” and his administration “Nazis.”
A year before Allen’s arrest at the D.C. dinner, Bluesky user “@aurelius2k5” tried convincing ColdForce that denying the president’s legitimacy could lead to dangerous radicalism. The person compared ColdForce’s thinking to Trump supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. ColdForce did not appear to listen.
“Would I be correct to assume there’s not really a precedent for what the military can/should do in the scenario of ‘president and congress elected illegitimately, [Supreme Court] appointed by said illegitimate president’?” asked ColdForce in a Feb. 22, 2025, post proposing scenarios about Trump.
“He won fair and square,” the other account replied. “Repulsive as that thought is, it’s reality. Drifting off into stolen election theories puts you into J6 rioter mental illness territory. We have to deal with facts as they are.”
An attorney for Allen and a prosecutor in his case did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF. “@aurelius2k5” could not be reached.
Officials are now piecing together Allen’s digital footprint to determine what drove his alleged plans to kill Trump and other officials, The New York Times and CNN reported. Prosecutors say Allen traveled by train from California to D.C., rushed past security at the Washington Hilton and shot a Secret Service agent, who survived, before being restrained. The attack was so premeditated that Allen booked a room at the hosting hotel more than two weeks in advance and “used open-source media to track the President’s movements leading up to the Dinner,” prosecutors alleged in a Wednesday motion for pretrial detention.
He faces attempted presidential assassination and gun charges. Allen faces up to life in prison if convicted.
“The *facts* are that Trump’s administration is making Nazi salutes, actively extorting former friends and allies, and blatantly lying on a constant basis,” ColdForce replied. “There are no grounds there for the *assumption* that his win was in fact fair; he quite literally neither understands nor respects the concept.”
“Whether his win was legitimate or not does not change the ongoing effects of his win directly; however, it may change the legitimacy of his orders, and therefore is very relevant,” the account continued. ‘This couldn’t possibly happen here’ is a fallacy.”
‘Without Bounds’
Allen’s charges amplified fears about growing political violence in the U.S. after two attempts on Trump’s life in Pennsylvania and Florida in 2024 and conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s September murder in Utah. The Trump administration likewise stressed the gravity of Allen’s alleged actions in its Wednesday motion.
“In the defendant’s own words, he believes that ‘representatives and judges do not follow the law,’ and thus he does not believe he is bound to follow the law because he views the decisions of those representatives and judges as unlawful,” the Department of Justice wrote. “This type of justification for political violence is especially dangerous because it is without bounds.”
“Had the defendant achieved his intended outcome, he would have brought about one of the darkest days in American history,” the motion said.
ColdForce’s posts repeatedly hinted at deep governmental corruption that only drastic actions — including bloodshed — could address. The account claimed in December 2024 that this philosophy in part reflects the country’s founding principles.
“To say that America was not created by political violence is outright false,” ColdForce said.
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