The DOJ has pressed charges against White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) Dinner shooting suspect Cole Allen, including attempting to assassinate the president.
Allen faces three charges:
Allen appeared in a federal court this morning:
During a brief preliminary hearing in the case, Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh discussed the charges with Allen, as well as his rights as a criminal defendant. Allen accepted the services of two veteran public defenders, Tezira Abe and Eugene Ohm.U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro attended the hearing, along with the case’s lead prosecutors Jocelyn Ballantine and Charles Jones. They asked Sharbaugh to keep Allen detained through Thursday, when a hearing on his longer-term detention will take place before Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya — who once presided over Trump’s own criminal arraignment.“We are asking the court to preventatively detain Mr. Allen,” Ballantine said. “He has been charged with a federal crime of terrorism.”
Jeanine Ferris Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said Allen made the reservations at the Washington Hilton on April before traveling to DC on April 21:
Those charges are only three charges that are in the complaint that has been presented in federal district court about an hour ago. There will be additional charges as this investigation continues to unfold. But make no mistake, this was an attempted assassination of the President of the United States, with the defendant making clear what his intent was, and that intent was to bring down as many of the high ranking cabinet officials as he could. This is the kind of situation that we cannot tolerate, and as the Attorney General has just indicated, it could have been so much worse, but for the reality that we had the Secret Service, as well as the Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI. Now the facts make it very clear what this intent was. You may recall that it was on March 2 that the President indicated that he would be attending this public event at the at the Hilton, and on April 6, that’s when Cole Allen first made a hotel reservation at the Washington Hilton for three nights, the 24th the 25th and the 26th it was on April 21 that he traveled all the way from The west coast, from home, from his home near La, he gets to Chicago on April 23 and has been indicated he arrives in DC on the 24th and he checks into the hotel at about 3pm he stays overnight. He is very much aware that the President and the First Lady entered the ballroom at 8 PM and it was at 8:40 that he made a decision to rush the ballroom. And thank goodness law enforcement, the Secret Service, was able to prevent him from getting into that ballroom.
[Featured image via YouTube]
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY