U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in D.C., posted video to social media that she said shows the alleged assailant at the White House correspondents’ dinner, Cole Tomas Allen, shoot a Secret Service officer moments before his arrest.
Pirro posted the surveillance footage Thursday evening on X, after days of questions from Allen’s defense attorneys and independent experts about the details of the incident, including what a ballistics analysis will show once completed. The Secret Service officer, who is not identified by name in court records, was shot once in the chest while wearing a bulletproof vest and was not seriously injured, officials said.
“Today, we are releasing video already provided to U.S. District Court showing Cole Allen shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer during his attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Pirro said in the X post. “There is no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire.”
Pirro’s unqualified statement that Allen shot the officer goes further than what prosecutors have said in court filings.
An assistant U.S. attorney, Jocelyn Ballantine, wrote in a court filing the day before Pirro’s post that “the government’s investigation is ongoing and its analysis of the crime scene evidence and recovered ballistics evidence is not yet complete.” Ballantine wrote that the Secret Service officer saw Allen fire a shotgun, which had a spent cartridge in the chamber, and that investigators had found what appeared to be a buckshot pellet at the scene. Several officers heard the shotgun being fired, Ballantine added.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche has said officials believe on a preliminary basis that Allen shot at the officer. But at a news conference Wednesday, the day before Pirro’s post, Blanche said it would be “wildly inappropriate” to give a definitive conclusion.
“When we know something, I’m sure that we will let folks know, but I just want to get that right,” Blanche said. The Justice Department did not respond to questions Friday about whether Blanche agreed with Pirro’s conclusion. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
The new footage Pirro posted shows Allen running through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton that was staffed by multiple law enforcement officers, steps away from the ballroom where President Donald Trump and Cabinet officials had gathered with the members of the media for the black-tie dinner on April 25. The video is an extended and higher-resolution version of footage Trump posted on Truth Social shortly after the incident.
Allen is seen holding a shotgun with both hands, and he appears to raise the weapon and point its muzzle at law enforcement officers as he sprints through a magnetometer. One of those officers can be seen firing a gun four times as Allen runs past him and out of the video frame, The Washington Post previously reportedbased on a copy of the footage.
There is no clearly visible muzzle flash from Allen’s weapon, according to The Post’s previous report and two experts who reviewed the footage Pirro posted. Experts were split on whether they would have expected to see a flash.
Daniel O’Kelly, a former agent at the agency now called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a director of International Firearm Specialist Academy, said a flash may not be visible depending on factors including the type of cartridge and the amount of gunpowder it contained. Rick Vasquez, a firearms consultant and former chief of the firearms technology branch at ATF, said he would have expected to see a muzzle blast.
“A 12-gauge goes off quite a bit,” Vasquez said. “When you shoot a 12-gauge, especially indoors, you have a lot of unburned powder that comes out.”
The footage also shows that, a fraction of a second before the flash from the officer’s first shot, what appears to be dust falls from a light fixture above. More of the material is visible falling from that and other lights as additional shots are fired.
O’Kelly said any shock wave from the officer’s gun would not have been produced before the muzzle blast from that weapon, and that an unseen blast from the shotgun is one possible explanation.
Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, has been charged with attempting to assassinate the president, transporting firearms across state lines and discharging one of them during a violent crime. Pirro told reporters the night of the incident that the suspect also would be charged with assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon, but that count did not appear in the criminal complaint filed in court. Justice Department officials have said more charges against Allen are pending.
Before Pirro released the new footage, defense attorneys for Allen had questioned whether he had in fact fired the weapon. Public defenders Tezira Abe and Eugene Ohm said in a court filing that “video of the incident seen online seems to show no muzzle flash from the shotgun.”
Allen’s attorneys on Friday did not respond to a request for comment about the new video.
Prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to introduce the new video and several photographs of the weapons seized by law enforcement into the evidentiary record of the case during a court hearing Thursday that had been scheduled to decide whether to hold Allen in jail pending trial.
The hearing did not proceed as scheduled because Allen agreed moments before to be detained in jail. Hours later, prosecutors uploaded the photographs of the weapons, and selfies they said Allen took before the incident, to the court’s online docket, while Pirro posted the video on X. The footage also shows Allen walking around the area adjoining the hotel ballroom the night before the gala.
Jeremy Roebuck and Meg Kelly contributed to this report.
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