The incident occurred on Saturday evening at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, where the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was taking place. While Trump, his wife Melania and several government members and hundreds of other guests sat in the ballroom, shots were fired at a security checkpoint one floor above the venue.
A Secret Service officer was hit by a bullet in his protective vest during a brief exchange of fire; the perpetrator was overpowered and arrested by security guards. Trump, his wife and members of the government were quickly escorted out of the room by security officers, while other guests sought shelter under tables and on the floor.
No one was injured in the event hall. In a quickly arranged late-night press conference, Trump described the arrested man as a “would-be murderer” who was “targeting” him. On Sunday, the president told Fox News: “If you read his manifesto, you’ll see that he hates Christians.” The man’s relatives also “complained about it,” Trump said. “They even called in the police. He was a very disturbed person.”
The New York Post quoted a message that the 31-year-old suspect named Cole Allen is said to have sent to his family. In it, he expressed anger at Trump and his government and wrote that he wanted to target government officials “from the highest to the lowest.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche said “very preliminary” findings suggested the suspect intended to attack “members of the government.” The man has not yet cooperated with the investigators. A photo released by Trump shows the suspect lying face down on the floor in a hotel lobby, bare-chested and with his hands tied behind his back.
The suspected shooter is scheduled to appear before a federal judge on Monday. He was identified by US media as 31-year-old mechanical engineer Cole Tomas Allen from Torrance, California. As a photographer for the AFP news agency reported, heavily armed special forces from the FBI federal police searched a house in the town near Los Angeles on Saturday evening.
Trump attended the annual correspondents’ dinner for the first time as president on Saturday. He held his hastily arranged press conference after the incident in a tuxedo. Around 2,000 invited guests were in the hall during the dinner. After the shots, security forces shouted “On the floor!”, and guests in formal evening wear sought shelter under tables. Police stormed the venue and security officers took up positions on the stage with their weapons drawn.
The Hilton Hotel has been the scene of an attack on a US president in the past: in 1981, then-President Ronald Reagan suffered a gunshot wound in an assassination attempt there.
Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in July 2024 during the election campaign for his second term in office; the assassin’s bullet grazed his ear.
