Haunting new footage released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office shows the Washington Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting suspect roaming the hotel the night before the attack.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro shared the footage to X, alongside footage of the moment Cole Tomas Allen appears to shoot at a Secret Service officer.
“Today, we are releasing video already provided to U.S. District Court showing Cole Allen shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer during his attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” she wrote.
“There is no evidence the shooting was the result of friendly fire,” she continued.
“The video also shows Allen casing the area in the Hilton Hotel the day before the attack,” Pirro added. “My office along with the @FBI will continue this extensive investigation to bring Cole Allen to justice.”
The footage, recorded on Friday evening just before 9 p.m., shows the suspect walking up and down the hallways of the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was held on Saturday.
He can be seen walking up and down the same hallway several times in a seven-minute timespan. The video also shows him entering the hotel gym, talking to an employee sitting at a desk inside, and surveying the room.
The video also shows Allen storming the magnometers on the night of the attack and appearing to raise his shotgun and shoot at an agent. The agent was hit, but was wearing a bulletproof vest. Allen, who was quickly apprehended, was injured but not shot. The footage of the shooting had previously been obtained and reported on by the Washington Post.
Prosecutors have said that they believe Allen fired his shotgun at least once, and that the agent fired at least five shots. Allen was also armed with a handgun and several knives during the attack.
Allen, 31, is a part-time teacher who allegedly traveled to Washington, D.C. by train from California in order to carry out the attack.
According to a manifesto Allen sent to relatives minutes before the attack, his plan was to kill President Donald Trump and several of his administration officials, except for Kash Patel.
He allegedly told his loved ones that he planned the attack because he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
“Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it,” he added.
Allen also criticized the lack of security surrounding the event in his letter.
“What the hell is the Secret Service doing?” he wrote. “Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.”
“What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing,” he said. “No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event.”
“I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
The Daily Beast’s Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty, who was in attendance at the dinner and stayed in the hotel room next door to Allen’s, highlighted several holes in the security surrounding the event.
In an essay for the Daily Beast and on MS NOW’s The Weekend Primetime on Sunday, Dougherty explained that he was able to move around the hotel freely prior to the event, and was only asked to show I.D. once, when checking in.
“I have never been searched or frisked when I checked in, or moved in and out of the hotel. To get down from my room to the dinner, I simply flashed my ticket. It could have been a photocopy.” He noted that one colleague was able to get as far as the magnetometers with only a photo of a ticket.
“The only time I went past a checkpoint was at the same magnetometers that Cole Allen, 31, sprinted past with his gun,” Dougherty added.
“How on earth could that be considered safe?”
