Cole Tomas Allen, Torrance man accused of trying to kill Trump at press gala, to remain jailed

Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, was accused of trying to kill President Trump last week at the White House Correspondents Assn. Dinner will remain in federal prison until trial.

Allen agreed to his continued detention during a brief hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “He is accepting detention at this time,” Tezira Abe, one of the federal public defenders, told Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya. According to CNBC.

He did not defend himself at the hearing. According to Associated Press.

Allen’s other public defender, Eugene Ohm, and Abe had argued in a filing Wednesday for Allen’s pretrial release, citing Allen’s lack of a criminal record, family support and ties to his church, as well as inconsistencies and weaknesses they claimed existed in the government’s case against him.

Abe and Ohm did not respond to a request for comment after the hearing.

In addition to trying to kill Trump, Allen faces a terrorism-related charge that carries a life sentence, as well as two firearms charges for allegedly carrying two guns across state lines while traveling from California to Washington on the Amtrak train and firing one of those firearms — a shotgun — during the incident.

In their lawsuit Wednesday, attorneys arguing for Allen’s release not only insisted he poses no danger to society but also questioned the government’s reasoning and evidence for the charges against him.

Allen was captured on a hotel video camera speeding past U.S. Secret Service agents and entering the secure event space one floor above the dinner party, armed with a shotgun, a handgun and assorted knives, according to prosecutors. He then fell to the ground and was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.

Trump administration officials who attended the dinner, including Acting Solicitor General. Gen. Todd Blanche and D.C.’s U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, quickly indicted him, based on an email Trump and others called a “manifesto” but titled “Apology and Explanation” that Allen sent to the family while he breached event security.

In this document, Allen allegedly wrote that he targeted senior officials of the Trump administration and that the one with the highest rank among them had priority. He allegedly wrote that he would “pass through” others at the event to reach those officials, but that he did not target guests or hotel staff and chose to fire bullets instead of bullets to “minimize casualties” in the room.

The charge of attempting to murder the president hinged largely on that document, according to charging documents.

Blanche and Pirro also alleged that Allen fired during an encounter with Secret Service agents, where they said a Secret Service agent in a ballistic vest was shot. Prosecutors also claimed in court that Allen fired his shotgun, noting that they found one of the shell casings, but did not mention that a Secret Service officer was shot in the vest.

The alleged shooting was the basis for the discharge of a firearm.

In their lawsuits arguing for Allen’s release, his lawyers questioned the legitimacy of both claims.

They wrote that the government’s “only evidence” of Allen’s intent to kill Trump — the “Apology and Explanation” letter — was “far from clear” and never mentioned Trump’s name.

“The government’s evidence regarding the crime charged (the attempted assassination of the president) is based entirely on speculation, despite the most generous reading of its theory,” Allen’s lawyers wrote. “While the government may say that the letter expresses an intent to target administration officials, it falls well short of narrowing those officials down to President Trump.”

Regarding the discharge of a firearm, Allen’s attorneys wrote that the government “does not allege that Mr. Allen discharged any of the recovered weapons.” They wrote that the government, in its filing defending Allen’s continued detention, “essentially claimed that Mr. Allen shot a Secret Service Officer in his criminal complaint, then reneged on the theory by making no mention of the alleged officer.”

In the second document, prosecutors wrote that only one officer saw Allen fire his rifle “towards the stairs leading down to the ballroom.” However, they provided little evidence to support this claim, other than the discovery of an empty cartridge in the barrel of the shotgun.

“In sum,” Allen’s attorneys wrote, “the government’s entire argument about the nature and circumstances of the crime is based on inferences about Mr. Allen’s intent that raise more questions than answers.”

Prosecutors rejected defense requests in a separate file in the case to collect evidence.

“Preliminary analysis of the crime scene is consistent with the government’s evidence that your client fired at least one shot from a 12-gauge shotgun in the direction of Officer VG and that Officer VG fired his service weapon five times,” they wrote. “The government is not aware of any evidence collected and analyzed to date that is inconsistent with the above.”

They wrote that evidence showed Allen fired his Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun “at least once as he passed the magnetometers on the Washington Hilton’s Penthouse.”

They wrote that investigators found a spent cartridge in the chamber of the shotgun, that “the government’s preliminary ballistic and video analyzes indicate that your client fired the shotgun in the direction of the Secret Service officer identified only as “VG,” and that “at least one fragment physically consistent with a single pellet was recovered at the scene.”