The suspect in the shooting at a Washington gala where President Donald Trump was due to speak on April 25 is scheduled to make a court appearance on April 27, US officials said, as law-enforcement authorities seek to determine a motive for the attack by the heavily armed man.
The man, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, had sent a manifesto to his family before the shooting, calling himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin,” Reuters quoted a law-enforcement official as saying.
Late on April 25, a gunman charged through security at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, prompting brief panic as security agents tackled the man and rushed Trump from the hotel ballroom.
Police said the man was taken into custody after he fired a shotgun at a Secret Service agent at a checkpoint in the Washington Hilton hotel before being tackled and arrested.
In a late-night briefing at the White House, Trump — still dressed in his tuxedo — said the suspect had been armed with multiple weapons and that at least one law-enforcement officer was shot but protected by a bulletproof vest.
Washington interim police chief Jeffery Carroll told reporters the man was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives, and was not known to city police.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi later said the officer had been released from the hospital.
The manifesto allegedly written by the suspect ridiculed the “insane” lack of security at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was held and where the suspect had checked into as a guest, the law-enforcement official told Reuters.
“Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance,” the manifesto’s author reportedly wrote. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
RFE/RL could not immediately verify the authenticity of the manifesto.
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said the suspect traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then to Washington, checking into the Hilton the night before the attack. Blanche said Trump and key members of his administration were the likely targets.
“He’s not actively cooperating,” Blanche told CBS TV’s Face the Nation program.
“I expect that he will be formally charged tomorrow morning [April 27] in federal court in Washington.”
