White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect faces life in prison as feds reveal four-count indictment

A federal grand jury has indicted the man accused of trying to kill President Donald Trump and administration officials at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where he allegedly stormed through security with firearms and knives.

Cole Allen faces four counts, including attempting to assassinate the president and assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, a charge that was not among the initial counts from the Department of Justice after the April 25 attack. Allen is accused of shooting a Secret Service agent in the chest with a shotgun.

The grand jury in Washington, D.C., also accused Allen of transporting firearms and ammunition with the intent to commit a felony and carrying a firearm to commit a crime of violence.

He faces life in prison, if convicted.

Allen is due back in court May 11.

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The indictment was published one day after the federal judge initially overseeing the case hauled attorneys to court to address his “grave concerns” about the conditions of Allen’s pretrial detention, including his “seemingly unprompted solitary confinement for days,” the judge wrote in court filings.

Allen was briefly confined in a padded room in straitjacket-like restraints while being subject to visitation limits, around-the-clock lighting and repeated strip searches, according to his legal team.

“At a minimum, I should be apologizing to him,” Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said during Monday’s hearing. “We are obligated to make sure he’s taken care of. Mr. Allen, I’m sorry that things have not been the way they are supposed to.”

In a post on X, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro blasted Fauqui’s apology after Monday’s hearing, claiming the judge “believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant.”

Allen had also requested a Bible, which was provided to him on Tuesday, according to court filings.

A final determination about his pretrial detention conditions is expected by Wednesday.

He has not yet entered a plea.

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Allen, 31, booked a room at the Washington Hilton hotel where he armed himself before he tried to rush into a ballroom where top administration officials and dozens of journalists were attending an annual fundraising gala, according to federal prosecutors.

He allegedly fired a shotgun as he rushed through the checkpoint, hitting a Secret Service agent in the chest.

A bulletproof vest largely impeded the buckshot from injuring the agent, according to federal officials.

“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant's ⁠Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro said during an appearance on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.

“It is definitively his bullet,” she said.

Allen “had every intention to kill him and anyone who got in his way on his way to killing the president of the United States,” according to Pirro.

“We have a lot of evidence that indicates his intent and the fact that everything that he did thereafter, whether it was following what the president was doing, where he was going to the day of the event at the hotel, tracking on his phone, ‘Is the president in the ballroom yet? Has the president sat down yet? What time will dinner be served?’” she said.