Everything we know about Cole Allen, the DC diner shooter

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was disrupted on Saturday night after a gunman, Cole Allen, rushed into the security checkpoint and opened fire on law enforcement officers.

The suspected gunman was arrested at the scene and is expected to appear in court on Monday. One lawyer was shot but not seriously injured, and all Trump administration officials and lawmakers were safely evacuated. No injuries were reported to those who attended.

After the incident, President Donald Trump – who attended his first White House Correspondent’s dinner as president – asked that the event be postponed. While the dinner was scheduled to go ahead, it was canceled because law enforcement treated the scene as a crime scene.

Here’s what we know about Allen:

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the suspect may have been targeting administration officials when he appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

“It appears that the suspect was targeting members of the administration,” said Blanche, noting that authorities “still want to try to understand the reason for our initial investigation.”

Blanche said it was not clear whether the shooter was targeting “certain members” of the administration, only that “we understand that was his intention and what he intended to do.”

Blanche said Allen, from Torrance, California, traveled by train from “Los Angeles to Chicago, from Chicago to DC.”

Allen was booked into the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was being held, and Blanche said she checked in on Friday.

Blanche said the suspect is not cooperating with authorities, and officials have obtained more information about him “through other means.”

“We have started talking to people who know him, we have started looking at the evidence we have collected,” he said.

Allen was a teacher at C2 Education, a tutoring, test preparation and college admissions counseling provider, according to his LinkedIn profile.

C2, in a statement sent to CNBC, said they were “shocked to hear the news of the shocking incident that occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”

“We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer,” said the company.

His LinkedIn profile shows that he graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and from California State University, Dominguez Hills, with a master’s degree in computer science.

Allen reportedly wrote a letter detailing his plans, the contents of which were obtained by the New York Post.

In a letter published by the Post, Allen allegedly said that he “is no longer willing to allow a man who abuses children, a rapist and a traitor to ignore his crimes.”

Allen calls himself a “friendly corporate killer” in the book.

The suspected shooter also noted that security at the event and at the Washington Hilton was lighter than he expected, a warning echoed by many elected officials and attendees.

A hearing is now expected on Capitol Hill to answer this incident, which is the third attempt to kill Trump since 2024.

A spokesman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told MS NOW that the US Secret Service is planning a bipartisan hearing on “security and law enforcement issues involving the White House Correspondents Dinner.”

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told MS NOW that the suspect’s brother contacted the New London, Connecticut police department about the letters, and then contacted the Secret Service. The Secret Service read the letters between 9 pm and 11 pm ET on Saturday.

Blanche said Sunday that there is “no indication yet” that Allen is on law enforcement’s radar.

“We are still investigating what we know, if anything, about this person,” he said.

Blanche said Allen bought “two guns that he had” within the last two years, and said “he also had knives.”

Despite the apparent security breach and widespread talk of unusually lax security at the event, Blanche said she was “overconfident that the Secret Service did its job here.”

Allen “didn’t make it past the perimeter, he was quickly subdued… This is the law enforcement doing exactly what they have trained all their lives to do.”

— CNBC’s Ryan Ruggiero contributed to this report