California Man Charged With Attempting to Assassinate President at White House Correspondents' Dinner, Later Faces Added Terrorism Count
On the evening of April 25, 2026, during the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., with President Trump present, a man sprinted through a Secret Service screening checkpoint toward the ballroom and opened fire, the Justice Department said. A Secret Service officer was shot once in the chest and survived, and the man was tackled and arrested.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said the defendant, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was charged with attempting to assassinate the President of the United States and other offenses, and that a later superseding indictment added one count of act of terrorism while armed, based on the attempted first-degree murder of the President. The maximum penalty he faces is life imprisonment.
The Department said Allen was arrested with a Mossberg Maverick 88 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with one spent cartridge, a Rock Island Armory 1911 .38 caliber pistol, dozens of rounds of ammunition, two knives and four daggers. The officer fired five times; Allen was not shot and suffered only a minor knee injury. The FBI Washington Field Office is investigating, case No. 26cr98. The charges are allegations to be decided by a court.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Washington Hilton 酒店外景（资料照片）。APK 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Washington Hilton (file photo). Photo by APK, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
