Federal prosecutors on Monday charged 31-year-old Cole Allen, the suspected White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter, with attempting to assassinate the President of the United States.
That rarely used charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The seven-page criminal complaint also includes two gun charges: transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.
The complaint said that at the time of his arrest, Allen possessed a 12-gauge pump action shotgun and a Rock Island Armory 1911 .38 caliber pistol. He purchased the shotgun in 2025 and the pistol in 2023, according to prosecutors.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said at a press conference on Monday that there “will be additional charges as this investigation continues to unfold.”
Allen’s lawyer, public defender Tezira Abe, didn’t return a request for comment. In court on Monday, Abe said Allen has no prior arrests or convictions and “is presumed innocent at this time,” NBC reported.
The dinner, an annual toast to the First Amendment attended by journalists, politicians, and the occasional celebrity, was disrupted on Saturday after shots rang out in the lobby of the Washington Hilton, the hotel where the event was held.
The president and senior administration officials are typically at the dinner as well, though this was the first time Trump attended as president. Saturday night’s incident was the third known assassination attempt that Trump has faced.
Since the incident, Trump and some of his allies in Congress have said that the shooting makes it all the more important that the new White House ballroom in the East Wing be built, given the higher security.
Tim Röhn, the senior editor of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, wrote that the security protocols at the event was “surprisingly lax,” entailing simply flashing a screenshot of an invitation and passing through a metal detector before entering the ballroom.
Prosecutors say in the criminal complaint that Allen sent an email, likely pre-scheduled, shortly before 8:40 p.m. on Saturday, when he approached the security checkpoint at the Hilton.
That email included a message in a .txt file called “Apology and Explanation,” along with his “sincerest apologies for all the trouble I’ve caused.”
He signed off on the email “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” according to the complaint.
Here’s the full text of the message Allen sent to family:
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