The man arrested in an attack Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner wrote a chilling manifesto ranting against President Trump and his policies, saying he experiences “rage” over “everything this administration has done,” making it clear the motive was political.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, sent the anti-Trump screed to family members moments before opening fire near a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton, authorities said.
Although Mr. Allen does not directly name the president, he outlined his anger over multiple administration actions, including U.S. strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats, efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, and the handling of files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done,” Mr. Allen wrote in the more than 1,000-word manifesto.
The Washington Times has confirmed that Mr. Allen wrote the manifesto.
Mr. Allen said the attack was his “first real opportunity” to do something about the “crimes” of the Trump administration and that officials must be taken out from “highest-ranking to lowest.”
He wrote that he would not include FBI Director Kash Patel, who attended the dinner, among those he wanted to harm, but did not explain why.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Mr. Allen wrote, referring to himself as the “Friendly Federal Assassin.”
“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without a trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration,” he wrote, using religious terms to justify the shooting.
“Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes,” the manifesto said.
Mr. Allen’s criticisms of the president echo accusations commonly made by liberal writers, Democratic elected officials and left-wing podcasters. Many conservative figures noted Sunday that the parallel was exact: that Mr. Allen’s manifesto repeated familiar liberal talking points, not eccentric conspiracy theories.
Chaya Raichik, a popular conservative influencer who posts on X under the moniker “LibsOfTikTok,” posted videos of Trump critics such as actor Mark Ruffalo and Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat, speaking of the president in terms similar to those in Mr. Allen’s manifesto.
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In an interview that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Mr. Trump called CBS News anchor Nora O’Donnell “a disgrace” after she read a passage from the manifesto, which appeared to label him a “pedophile, rapist and traitor.”
“He’s a sick person, but you should be ashamed of yourself reading that, because I’m not any of those things,” Mr. Trump said. “You shouldn’t be reading that in ‘60 Minutes.’ You’re a disgrace. But go ahead, let’s finish the interview.”
He rejected the claims outright, saying he had been “totally exonerated” and arguing that Democrats were the ones connected to Epstein.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that Mr. Allen’s goal was to harm administration officials.
“It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mr. Allen contributed $25 to ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, in support of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in 2024, according to federal campaign finance records. He also had a sign supporting a local Democratic judge on his lawn in Torrance, California.
He attended a “No Kings” protest in California and was part of The Wide Awakes, a network of activists dedicated to social justice issues. It bears the same name as the 1860s abolitionist youth movement.
Mr. Allen, who was armed with a shotgun, handgun and knives when he rushed a security checkpoint at the dinner, laid out his “rules of engagement” for the attack.
He wrote that he would use buckshot rather than slugs because there would be less penetration through walls, and added that hotel employees and dinner guests were “not targets.” He said he would harm anyone attending the dinner to get to administration officials if “absolutely necessary.”
“Most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor and thus complicit,” he wrote.
The gunman got to the security checkpoint, where visitors would be searched for weapons, but ran through it, which is when the shots rang out. It wasn’t certain Sunday whether they were all Secret Service weapons or whether the attacker got off any.
The would-be assassin got within about 50 yards of the main ballroom, but never had a chance to harm Mr. Trump or the dinner guests. He would have had to descend a flight of stairs to reach the ballroom entrance and have a chance to start firing into the crowd.
A law enforcement officer was shot in a bullet-resistant vest, but Mr. Trump said the officer is expected to recover.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Blanche said in separate TV interviews that investigators were looking into Mr. Allen’s writings and social media posts. The president described the social media posts as anti-Trump, saying the suspect “hates Christians,” but did not offer more details.
Mr. Allen’s brother in Connecticut contacted local police after learning of the manifesto. The New London Police Department issued a statement that it was contacted at 10:49 p.m., roughly two hours after the shooting, by a person with information related to the attack.
The police department said it notified federal law enforcement immediately.
Federal agents interviewed Mr. Allen’s sister in Rockville who told law enforcement that her brother had legally purchased firearms from a California gun store and stored them at his parents’ home in Torrance without their knowledge, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Allen legally bought a .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol in October 2023 and a 12-gauge shotgun in 2025, AP reported.
Mr. Allen is expected to be arraigned in federal court Monday. Authorities say he is a lone wolf, but little is known about his movements before the attack.
Mr. Blanche said Mr. Allen checked into the Washington Hilton one day before the attack and hid his weapons inside his luggage. Mr. Allen traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then, later, from Chicago to Washington.
Public records show that Mr. Allen was a highly educated engineer who worked as a part-time teacher while developing video games. He participated in a summer undergraduate research fellowship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was involved in a Christian fellowship and its Nerf Club while studying at the California Institute of Technology.
Mr. Allen attended Pacific Lutheran High School in Gardena, California. A former teammate on the volleyball team told NBC News that Mr. Allen was a “borderline genius” and “super stable.”
“Other people study hard. He didn’t have to study. It would just come to him. He was really, really smart,” said the former teammate, who did not wish to be identified.
“He was probably the most gentle person on the team, which makes it even more shocking that he did this,” said the teammate, adding that Mr. Allen was interested in coding and computers but was also very knowledgeable about other subjects.
The former teammate expressed surprise that Mr. Allen would be connected to the attack at the WHCA dinner.
According to Mr. Allen’s LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Caltech in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. The school confirmed that it had a record of a student named Cole Allen who graduated that year but said it did not know whether that was the same person as the man arrested in the shooting.
While at Caltech, Mr. Allen was part of the team that won a mechanical engineering design competition to build robots that could play soccer. In 2016, his robots competed against four other teams in a soccer tournament.
He was featured in a local news report about developing a prototype emergency brake to assist people in wheelchairs.
“The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels, but don’t lock the chair to the ground. But with this device, that will prevent the chair from skidding at all,” Mr. Allen told ABC7 in 2017.
After graduating from Caltech, Mr. Allen earned a master’s degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, in 2025.
He worked as a teacher at C2 Education, a private tutoring company in Torrance, where he was named teacher of the month in December 2024.
Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that appear to be linked to Mr. Allen detailed a game he released in 2018 dubbed “Bohrdom.”
The game is described as a “skill-based, non-violent asymmetrical fighting game loosely derived from a chemistry model that is itself loosely based on reality.” The game had few reviews before the shooting.
Jeff Smith, a neighbor, said he had met Mr. Allen once.
“The one interaction I had was like, maybe he could be on the spectrum,” Mr. Smith told the New York Post.
• Seth McLaughlin contributed to this report.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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