Judge blasts Cole Allen treatment by jail in Trump case

Cole Allen, accused of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, was treated harsher in prison than he treated defendants in criminal trials on Jan. 6, 2021, an angry federal judge said Monday.

“I can tell you that I have never encountered a defendant who was placed in a 5-point restraint or locked in a secure cell on January 6th,” Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui told prosecutors at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington. he said.

Faruqui said he found it “extremely disturbing” that Allen, 31, was placed on suicide watch and placed on restrictions without any finding that he was at risk of suicide and without a criminal history.

“Many people seem to have forgotten January 6, but I have not,” Faruqui said. “Amnesties erase beliefs, but they do not erase history.”

Allen’s attorney, Eugene Jeen-Young Kim Ohm, said officials at the D.C. jail placed Allen in a secure, padded cell in essentially 24-hour isolation with constant lighting.

The lawyer told Faruqui that Allen was told he could not make a legal search over the weekend, that he had no paperwork or legal business in his room, and that the Bible he requested was denied.

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Faruqui said when asking how the D.C. jail could house people with less restrictive conditions than Allen, who was convicted and held without bail.

“This is a high-profile case,” the judge said. “I’m not living under a rock… He shouldn’t be in solitary confinement.”

“If this is what’s going to happen, I want to know and I want to know why,” Faruqui said.

The judge ordered prosecutors to send an email by Tuesday morning informing them when a final decision on where Allen will be detained will be made.

Allen’s lawyers called for the removal of the suicide measures over the weekend, saying they were punitive. They withdrew that request after being told the measures had been lifted, but the judge said he had serious questions about Allen’s treatment and said the hearing on the matter would continue on Monday.

The Torrance, Calif., resident was seized by Secret Service officers on April 25 after passing through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton Hotel, where Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and other senior Trump administration officials were dining with hundreds of journalists.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said over the weekend that Allen fired the shotgun he was carrying at a Secret Service officer whose protective vest prevented him from being seriously injured.

—MS NOW’s Nora McKee contributed to this article.