Cole Allen, the 31-year-old California teacher who opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, sent a detailed anti-Trump manifesto to family members roughly 10 minutes before the shooting began, the NY Post reported.
In the document, Allen identified specific targets: Trump administration officials, ranked by seniority, whom he called “targets” he was willing to kill.
“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” Allen wrote, apparently referring to President Trump.
Allen’s brother provided the manifesto to police. The document, signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” offered a window into his radicalization and his planning. He justified the planned violence on religious grounds, arguing that turning the other cheek in the face of others’ oppression amounted to complicity.
“Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes,” he wrote, citing victims he claimed included detained immigrants, executed fishermen, and abused children.
Allen also revealed tactical decisions designed to limit collateral damage. He said he would use buckshot rather than slugs to reduce wall penetration, “hoping” he would not need to fire through bystanders who he considered complicit by attending a speech by Trump.
The manifesto provides details about how Allen breached security at the Washington Hilton. He mocked what he called the “insane” lack of internal security, noting that he had walked in with multiple weapons without anyone questioning whether he posed a threat. He suggested that a foreign adversary could have brought far more devastating firepower undetected.
“The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before,” he wrote.
Secret Service interviews with Allen’s sister in Rockville, Maryland, revealed that he had made politically radical remarks for some time and spoke of doing “something” to fix the world’s problems. Authorities confirmed that Allen had purchased two handguns and a shotgun, storing them at his parents’ home, and regularly trained at a shooting range.
Allen is believed to have been part of a group called “The Wide Awakes” and attended a “No Kings” protest in California.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
