Rachel Abrams: Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for being here. On Saturday night, as you all know, an act of violence occurred at a gathering that symbolizes something fundamental to our system of government. From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the Daily. Today, the Department of Justice filed three federal charges in United States District Court against Cole Thomas Allen.

Rachel Abrams: On Monday. The man accused of storming the White House correspondence center with multiple weapons was charged in federal court in Washington DC. Violence has no place in civic life. It cannot and will not be used to disrupt democratic institutions or intimidate those who serve them.

Rachel Abrams: And it certainly cannot continue to be used against the president of the United States. Today, Devlin Barrett explains what we're learning about the suspect, his plan to target the president, and whether this entire event should ultimately be thought of as a security failure or success. It's Tuesday, April 28th. Devon Barrett, welcome back to the Daily.

Devlin Barrett: Thanks for having me.

Rachel Abrams: So, we've been getting some clarity on who this shooter was who attempted to storm the White House correspondents dinner on Saturday. And details have been emerging since this happened, but Devlin, you covered the Justice Department for the Times. Tell us what we learned on Monday.

Devlin Barrett: 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.

Devlin Barrett: 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 weapons across country and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. That charge basically means that he fired the weapon while committing a crime. And one thing that officials have emphasized since this happened is that the first round of charges aren't going to be their last word on this. There may be more charges added as they understand the evidence better and as they have a better grasp on what exactly they think happened.

Rachel Abrams: Let's talk for a moment about the suspect at this point. What have we learned about his background?

Devlin Barrett: So once this happened, obviously we've been trying to figure out as much as we can about his background, about his life. He's 31. He's from Torrance, California. And he's by all accounts a smart guy. He has a a master's in computer science. He went to Caltech, which is not an easy school to get into.

Devlin Barrett: We know that he, you know, was raised in the Protestant church and his father was a church elder. And in talking to people who know him and talking to some of his former students because he worked as a tutor for a good bit of time, they all describe him as nice, cheerful, a bit of a nerd. Um, and all of them that have been interviewed by reporters expressed shock and surprise that the person they knew as this tutor and academic would do anything like this. Mhm.

Rachel Abrams: We also know that he left behind a kind of apology note, an explanation note to his friends and family.

Devlin Barrett: 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&A where he imagines criticism and then he imagines what he would say in response to that criticism about his actions.

Rachel Abrams: Do we have any information about what radicalized this man that made him go from being angry and agrieved to actually picking up weapons, traveling across the country, and attempting to assassinate the president?

Devlin Barrett: Not yet. You know, the FBI is combing through his online presence, interviewing his family and friends. So far, the online presence, the online postings suggest that he was a liberal-minded person who had liberal political views and was very unhappy and upset and angry about things the Trump administration was doing. That seems to be a driving factor for him. But in terms of how did he get to that point, that's something that the FBI is still unpacking.

Rachel Abrams: Can you just explain, Devlin, why is that piece of writing relevant to the charges that we saw today?

Devlin Barrett: Well, it's super relevant to what prosecutors will have to ultimately prove in court, which is the mindset of someone and the aims and goals of someone who was tackled and and, you know, taken down, you know, very early in his attempted attack. for prosecutors helps explain what his actual target was, what his targets were. That's why this note to his family is so important because he makes pretty clear without ever really saying Trump's name in the writing that Trump is the one he is most angry at. Trump is the one he is hoping to get to

Rachel Abrams: because presumably they would not have been able to charge him with attempting to assassinate the president if they did not know what his motivation was because he did not actually get close enough to the president to attempt any kind of assassination. Do I have that right?

Devlin Barrett: Right.

Rachel Abrams: You mentioned earlier that the suspect was from California. I'm sure by now a lot of people are aware that he traveled from California to try to carry out the shooting in DC. What do we know about what and how he planned?

Devlin Barrett: So, we know that he bought the two weapons involved, a pumpaction shotgun and a 38 caliber pistol in recent years. He bought those in California and he traveled with them when he came to Washington. That doesn't mean that he's been planning to do this from the moment he bought those weapons. It just means that he bought the weapons several years ago, right?

Devlin Barrett: And in early March, the president announces that he will go to this dinner. It's called the White House Correspondents Association dinner. It is a big production in the nation's capital. They do it every year around this time. And this president hasn't typically gone to it. So, in some sense, it was a bigger deal this year because Trump had decided to go. Prosecutors say in the beginning of April, the suspect starts making his travel plans to go to Washington.

Devlin Barrett: 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, right?

Devlin Barrett: Then on Saturday night, the night of the event, the dinner Gallup proper begins at around 8:00. Around 8:30, there's a security camera footage that shows the suspect racing, just sprinting all out through the first security checkpoint. And you can sort of see the shotgun in his hand. You can't really see the the handgun or the knives that agents say they later took off of him, but he races through that checkpoint and out of the frame of the video.

Devlin Barrett: Law enforcement officials say that the part you can't see that happens right after that is that one of those agents turns and fires five shots at the suspect. and none of those shots actually hit him, but he does fall to the ground and is quickly tackled and disarmed. Law enforcement officials also say that the same agent who fired also gets struck by a round in his protective vest. The vest protects him and he's not badly injured, but that agent does take a bullet in the vest.

Devlin Barrett: Some of what unfolds next is actually quite similar to other security scares. People hear what they think are gunshots. They're not sure what's happening. They're not sure where the danger is, but they're told to to get down essentially like just get down, you know, lower than your table. So if there is a gunman, he can't see you. And that's what a lot of people in the ballroom are doing in that moment. And you know, it's basically 90 120 seconds of of real terror because no one really knows what the danger is or what direction it's coming from.

Devlin Barrett: But at the same time, you've got Secret Service agents outside the ballroom dealing with the suspect on the floor above. And you've got Secret Service agents on the floor of the ballroom essentially doing their best to seal off and make sure no one goes in or out of the ballroom in that moment to keep the people inside the room safe. And you've got the president's security detail and the vice president's security detail moving them as quickly as they can off the day to get them out of harm's way.

Devlin Barrett: So once it's clear that no one has been killed in this incident, no one has been seriously injured in this incident, it becomes more of a question of okay, how does this keep happening? This is at least the third time someone has tried to kill President Trump in one form or another. And so it raises a whole bunch of questions about the security at the event and you know preparation for the event.

Rachel Abrams: Develin, before the break, you mentioned that a lot of questions have emerged about the security around this event and I have seen a bunch of different reports essentially criticizing what happened as a security failure. Just the fact that an armed gunman could get as far as he did. He said in his letter how unimpressed he was with security at the hotel. What do we make of all of that criticism?

Devlin Barrett: I mean, look, some of it is a very natural human reaction, right, to the horror and surprise that someone did this at all. That part, I think, is perfectly understandable and it's always worth asking questions. You know, I cover law enforcement. That's sort of what I do every day. I think here though there's 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.

Devlin Barrett: I think most security experts would tell you that's an obvious thing that needs to be guarded. Here. The situation I think is quite different in that this person tried to essentially bumrush 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. He was taken down and tackled before he could even get to the stairs that led to that floor.

Devlin Barrett: So in talking to former secret service and talking to other security experts, a lot of folks have said to me, look, if the question is, what do you do to prevent this? This is what the perimeter is for. The perimeter is designed to deal with this issue before you're close to the event itself. And that's what happened here. I do think that you're going to see though a number of conversations and debates about well maybe this hotel is not the best place to hold these events anymore because you do have a functioning hotel right on top of a large ballroom.

Rachel Abrams: That's certainly what the suspect was pointing out in what he wrote.

Devlin Barrett: Well, exactly. And that's what he seemed to really focus on in this letter he sent to family and friends. He seemed to think the security was terrible and the security didn't really police the lobby, didn't really police the guests. He has a sort of simplistic understanding of all the security measures around him and doesn't quite grasp that the security he observes Friday night and Saturday morning is not the same security that is in place by Saturday night. And I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand all of the multi-layered things that go into securing an event like that. And strangely enough, the gunman was one of the people who didn't understand all the layers that go into that.

Rachel Abrams: To put another way, it's not Secret Services's job to protect the lobby of hotel.

Devlin Barrett: Absolutely. I will say there is one I think important security question here that hasn't really been answered and might change our understanding of the security for this event and that is did law enforcement whether you're talking about Secret Service or FBI or California police did law enforcement agents before all this happened have any understanding that this person might be a threat to the president and we don't really I think have a clear answer to that yet. But if the answer is yes, then why weren't trip wires telling investigators that this person was coming? But that's a big if, right? We don't know the answer to that yet.

Rachel Abrams: I don't think I can recall a president/presidential candidate, just to be really precise about our language here, who has had this many attempts on their life in such a short amount of time. We have seen in addition to this attacks on politicians in Minneapolis and Israeli embassy staffers in DC just to name a couple examples of why I think it feels to a lot of people like we're living in this age of heightened political violence and Delin just given what you cover your experience I just wonder if this is how you also see it and what you make of this.

Devlin Barrett: So it's a great question. One thing is 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. That has definitely increased. There's data that show that's increased. I think that is a problem for law enforcement because all of the agencies that are designed to protect all these people they are having to dig through more information. There's sort of a sea of hostility out there online. A sea of angry threatening language that makes it harder and more timeconuming to figure out who is really dangerous and who is just sort of a keyboard commando.

Devlin Barrett: And I think one of the challenges here for the government and for the public is what are you willing to do or not do to be as secure as possible? Where do you draw the line between public life and government having events? You know, this was a very secure event in many, many ways. But I think a lot of the people walked out of that ballroom feeling more afraid and more in danger than they'd ever felt in their lives.

Rachel Abrams: Devon Barrett, thank you so much.

Devlin Barrett: Thanks for having me.