Assassination Attempt Suspect Charged

“So on Monday, there were a few key developments. First, the suspect, Cole Allen, was formally charged in a criminal complaint. He was charged with attempting to assassinate the president. That wasn't the only charge, but it's the most important charge by far because that charge carries a potential life sentence. The other two charges in the criminal complaint are transportation of a firearm over interstate commerce, and that's a reference to him allegedly bringing the weapons across country, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.”

“Like many people, I read the letter that he wrote, and it is apologizing for what he's done. It's sort of a goodbye letter to people that he loves. It is imagining, at times, a q and a where he imagines criticism, and then he imagines what he would say in response to that criticism about his actions.”

“And so in late April, he gets on a train from Los Angeles, and that goes to Chicago. Once he gets to Chicago, he buys a ticket to Washington, DC. He arrives in Washington, DC on Friday and checks into the hotel, the Washington Hilton. That's the same hotel where this big gala dinner is going to be held.”

“I think here, though, there is a big difference between, for example, the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024 and what happened here. Because I think there was a clear security failure in Butler where you had a rooftop with a sight line toward the candidate that was not protected, that was not guarded. Here, the situation, I think, is quite different in that this person tried to essentially bum rush a fancy black tie gala. He made it a matter of steps past the initial security screening, but he never even got onto the floor where the event was happening.”

“One thing has definitely increased, and that is the number of threats just floating around the Internet, the number of threats that go after not just politicians, but, for example, judges and schools and hospitals and all manner of American public life have a much larger increase in just threats being thrown around. There's sort of a sea of hostility out there online, a sea of angry, threatening language that makes it harder and more time consuming to figure out who is really dangerous and who is just sort of a keyboard commando.”

“So as part of this larger debate about how to keep the president safe, how to keep senior officials safe, the president and his senior advisers are all arguing that this incident only shows how badly they need to finish construction of the White House Ballroom. This is a larger fight that, you know, has been going on for months about whether this is really necessary or proper and whether the president can do it on his own without congressional approval. A judge has said no, but that legal fight is still going on.”

“But I also think part of the challenge here for law enforcement is making the public feel like the president is safe, making the public feel the senior government officials are safe. And if a guy with a shotgun can just sort of storm a security checkpoint and cause a great deal of panic and fear, in that sense, it may be becoming harder and harder for law enforcement to prevent that kind of incident.”