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April 27, 2026, 5:43 a.m. ET

Live Updates: Suspect in Press Gala Shooting to Be Arraigned in Federal Court

Two law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, Calif. Authorities said the suspect appeared to express anger at administration officials and President Trump, who was rushed from the dinner unharmed.

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Security outside the Washington Hilton after gun shots were fired during the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

Salwan Georges for The New York Times

Secret Service members responding to the sound of gunfire.

Salwan Georges for The New York Times

A Secret Service crime scene investigations unit searching a vehicle near the White House.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Reporting on the suspect in Torrance on Sunday.

Apu Gomes/Getty Images

Inside the ballroom, guests took cover.

Evan Vucci/Reuters

Shattered glass at the Washington Hilton.

Kylie Cooper/Reuters

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April 27, 2026, 5:43 a.m. ET

Luke Broadwater

Michael M. Grynbaum

Shawn McCreesh

Tyler Pager

Devlin Barrett

Maggie Haberman

and

Amy Qin

Here’s the latest.

A suspect detained in connection with gunfire at the hotel where President Trump was attending the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington over the weekend was expected to be arraigned in federal court on Monday.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said that the suspect would face two counts of using a firearm and one count of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon. Additional charges are expected, she said.

Two law enforcement officials familiar with an investigation into the shooting identified the suspect as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif. They asked to remain anonymous because they had not been authorized to disclose the information. Federal authorities in Los Angeles said that a search warrant was served late Saturday night at Mr. Allen’s home.

The suspect was taken into custody on Saturday night after running through a security checkpoint inside the Washington Hilton and exchanging fire with law enforcement officials. Mr. Trump and members of his cabinet, who were attending the dinner in the hotel’s ballroom with hundreds of journalists, were rushed out of the room and were unharmed.

A note that the authorities say was written by the suspect appears to express deep anger at the administration and the president. Administration figures were the suspect’s “targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” according to a copy of the

roughly 1,000-word document

shared by two law enforcement officials who were not authorized to disclose the information.

The suspect expressed surprise at having been able to check into the hotel a day before the event with a shotgun, a handgun and a knife, according to the document.

The attack has raised fresh questions about whether the Secret Service is adequately prepared to protect the president in an age of rising threats and political violence. Officials insisted that the security measures at the dinner worked as intended, noting that the suspect never made it into the ballroom.

On Sunday night, President Trump told 60 Minutes that he told agents to “wait a minute” as they urged him to get down, saying he was curious to see what was happening. He said he finally dropped to the floor with the first lady. “My thought was, ‘I’ve been through this a couple of times before,’” but his wife had not, he said.

Still, he said, she was good under pressure in the moment.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

Royal guest:

The state visit by King Charles III of Britain will proceed as planned, according to a statement released by Buckingham Palace. Charles was

expected to arrive in Washington

on Monday.

Suspect:

Mr. Allen worked as a tutor and graduated from the California Institute of Technology. Those who knew him are struggling to reconcile the man they knew with the shocking act of political violence that he is accused of.

California resident:

Investigators determined that the suspect took a train from Los Angeles to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Washington, Mr. Blanche said.

Rumors and speculation:

Influencers jumped to

fill the information void with conspiracy theories

about the attack.

Show more

April 27, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET

Amy Qin

Chelsia Rose Marcius

and

Shawn Hubler

Amy Qin reported from Washington, Chelsia Rose Marcius from New York and Shawn Hubler from Los Angeles.

The suspect wrote of anger at administration before gala attack, officials say

Image

Investigators worked outside the California home of a man who is being held in connection to an attack at the White House correspondents’ dinner.

Credit...

Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

Before he embarked on a cross-country journey, Cole Tomas Allen offered the people in his life a series of explanations for his absence, according to writings that the authorities say he left behind.

He had a personal emergency, he told his colleagues and the students he was tutoring. He told his parents simply that he had an interview.

But Mr. Allen appears to have had a much different and much darker plan when he set out on a train from California to Washington, according to two senior law enforcement officials who say he is now in custody, accused of charging through security outside the White House Correspondents’ dinner and opening fire.

Now, those who knew Mr. Allen are struggling to reconcile the man they knew with the shocking act of political violence that he has been accused of perpetrating.

The suspect, who the authorities have not publicly named but who was

identified by the two officials

as Mr. Allen 31, of Torrance, Calif., is expected to be charged with multiple crimes in a court appearance on Monday.

The writing the authorities attributed to Mr. Allen bounced between remorse for the deception of friends and family and gratitude for a lifetime of love and support. In it, he displayed outrage at the policies put in place by the White House, and alluded to allegations of sexual misconduct, saying that he is “no longer willing” to allow a “traitor to coat my hands with his crimes” — an apparent reference to President Trump, though the writing does not mention him by name.

The two law enforcement officials who shared the writings with The New York Times asked not to be named because they had not been authorized to disclose the information.

It was uncertain on Sunday whether Mr. Allen had obtained legal counsel, and close relatives declined to discuss his arrest or did not respond to requests for comment.

The writing said the suspect had come to the Washington Hilton looking for members of the Trump administration.

“Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” the writing reads, apparently referring to Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. It was not clear from the writing why Mr. Patel was mentioned by name.

The language seemed foreign to Mr. Allen’s neighbors, former classmates and tutoring clients in Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles. There, the home he shared was swarmed shortly before midnight Saturday by a S.W.A.T. team from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Allen was a registered “no party preference” voter — the California equivalent of an independent. His sole political contribution in available records appears to have been $25 to the campaign for Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee in the fall of 2024.

“He seemed like a completely average guy,” Max Harris, a senior at a local high school who had been tutored for several months by Mr. Allen, said late Saturday night as he stood near the crowd of federal authorities and onlookers who had gathered outside the modest, two-story house where Mr. Allen lived in Torrance.

“Like, I never would have expected anything like this from a guy like him.”

Mr. Allen was listed as a tutor with C2 Education, which issued a statement Sunday that said they were cooperating with law enforcement. “Violence of any kind is never the answer,” the organization said.

Image

Cole Tomas Allen was detained by law enforcement.

Credit...

Bill Frischling/CQ Roll Call, via Reuters

The authorities have said that the suspect in the Saturday attack was taken into custody shortly after charging through a security checkpoint and exchanging gunfire with federal law enforcement officials inside the Washington Hilton. He was armed with knives, a shotgun, and a handgun, authorities have said.

The suspect is initially expected to be charged with two counts of using a firearm and one count of assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said on Saturday. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday in Federal District Court and additional charges are expected, she said.

Mr. Allen was born the oldest of four siblings in Los Angeles County.

As of Saturday night, Mr. Allen’s father was listed online as an elder at Grace Torrance, which describes itself as a Protestant church in the Reformed tradition.

In 2013, Mr. Allen enrolled at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, an elite research university in Pasadena, Calif. At that time, according to federal data, Caltech admitted less than 11 percent of its undergraduate applicants.

There, Mr. Allen studied mechanical engineering. He graduated with a 3.0 GPA, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In the summer of 2014, he did a summer internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, according to his LinkedIn profile. And a

local news clip

from 2017 shows Mr. Allen, clad in a checkered collared shirt and sweater, demonstrating his design for a wheelchair emergency brake at a conference focused on designing products for older people.

He was also involved in the Nerf Club, in which members armed with foam toys organized campus battles, and belonged to a campus Christian fellowship. Another fellowship member recalled that while Mr. Allen was generally quiet and studious, he was not shy about defending his own interpretation of his faith.

“He was definitely a strong believer in evangelical Christianity at the time that I knew him,” the fellowship member, Elizabeth Terlinden, said.

After graduating from Caltech in 2017, Mr. Allen spent several years working as a mechanical engineer, a self-employed video game developer and a college test-prep tutor, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In 2022, he enrolled at California State University, Dominguez Hills, to pursue a master’s degree in computer science. The university said in a statement on Saturday that it had a record of a student matching Mr. Allen’s name earning a degree in 2025.

Bin Tang, a professor of computer science at the university,

taught Mr. Allen in several classes.

“I am very shocked to see the news,” Dr. Tang said in an email. “He was a very good student indeed, always sitting in the first row of my class, paying attention, and frequently emailing me with coursework questions.”

Records shared by the two law enforcement officials show that Mr. Allen bought a handgun in October 2023 and a shotgun in August 2025.

According to the note shared by authorities, Mr. Allen told his colleagues and students in recent days that a personal emergency would keep him from his tutoring duties and told his parents that he had “an interview.”

Then he took a train from Los Angeles to Washington via Chicago, checking into the Hilton hotel a day or two before the hotel hosted the White House Correspondents Association dinner, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Mr. Blanche added that initial evidence indicated that Mr. Allen had acted alone.

Alan Blinder

,

Devlin Barrett

,

Sonia A. Rao

,

Pooja Salhotra

,

Orlando Mayorquín

,

Laurel Rosenhall

,

Jin Yu Young

and

Stephanie Saul

contributed reporting.

Show more

Video

What Our Reporter Saw During the D.C. Shooting

Our reporter was with President Trump at the White House correspondents’ dinner when a gunman breached security. He describes the frantic scenes that unfolded.

April 26, 2026, 6:11 p.m. ET

Amy Qin

and

Chelsia Rose Marcius

Officials are investigating a note tied to the correspondents’ dinner attack.

Image

A cameraman stands in front of a California home connected to Cole Tomas Allen, who is being held in connection to an attack at a gala in Washington, D.C., according to officials.

Credit...

Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

Federal authorities are investigating a note they said was written by the man being held in connection with the attack at the White House correspondents’ dinner that suggests he was angered by the actions of the Trump administration.

The writing was shared with The New York Times by two law enforcement officials who asked not to be named because they had not been authorized to disclose the information. The suspect,

identified by the officials

as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., is in custody and expected to be charged with multiple crimes in a court appearance on Monday.

It was uncertain on Sunday whether Mr. Allen had obtained legal counsel and close relatives could not be reached.

“I am a citizen of the United States of America,” the writing says. “What my representatives do reflects on me.”

In the next sentence, the writer alludes to allegations of sexual misconduct, saying that he is “no longer willing” to allow a “traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” an apparent reference to President Trump though the writings do not mention him by name.

The writing does suggest that administration officials were the top targets.

“Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” the writings read, apparently referring to Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. It was not clear from the writing why Mr. Patel was singled out.

Secret Service are “targets only if necessary,” the writing says. Hotel security, Capitol Police and National Guard are “not targets if at all possible.” And hotel employees and guests are “not targets at all.”

Contained among the 1,000 or so words is an extensive list of apologies to his friends, students, family and others for his actions, as well as thanking them for their support throughout his life. It was not immediately clear where the authorities obtained the writing.

Anticipating the criticism that the attack might not be in line with Christian teachings, the writing appears to refer to reports of

abuse in immigrant detention camps

, the

recent lethal attacks on boats

in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean and the

bombing of an elementary school

in Iran, among other things.

“Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior,” the writing reads. “It is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

Mr. Trump appeared to refer to the writing in an interview on Fox News on Sunday morning when he noted that the suspect had “a manifesto” and that he “hates Christians.”

“He was a very troubled guy,” Mr. Trump said.

Show more

April 26, 2026, 6:00 p.m. ET

Devlin Barrett

Eileen Sullivan

and

Chelsia Rose Marcius

Devlin Barrett and Eileen Sullivan reported from Washington, and Chelsia Rose Marcius from New York.

The security at the correspondents’ dinner worked as intended, experts say.

Image

The scene in the hallways after shots were fired during the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton on Saturday.

Credit...

Salwan Georges for The New York Times

The gunman who sprinted through a security checkpoint on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton believed that the Secret Service was poorly prepared to guard top administration officials against him, according to writing he left behind. Agents, in turn, stopped him in a matter of seconds.

The episode raised fresh questions about whether the Secret Service was sufficiently prepared to protect the president in an age of rising threats and spasms of political violence. But officials insisted that the security measures had worked as intended, pointing to the fact that the suspect never made it into the hotel ballroom where President Trump and hundreds of journalists were gathered for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“The system worked,” Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, recounting how the suspect made it only feet past the security perimeter.

The suspect’s writing was shared with The New York Times by two law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose the information.

Even as some politicians and pundits contended on Sunday that security should have been tighter and that the suspect should never have gotten that close, former law enforcement officials said in interviews that the appropriate safeguards appeared to have been in place.

“From experience, this could have been a massacre,” said Paul Eckloff, who served on President Trump’s security detail during his first term. “It wasn’t, because armed, trained professionals stood between the attacker and a ballroom full of people. The question is not, how did he get close? The question people should be asking is, why is everyone alive? It’s because the security plan worked.”

In his writing, the suspect,

Cole Tomas Allen

, expressed surprise that he was able to check into the hotel a day before the event with a shotgun, a handgun and a knife, presumably in his luggage.

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said that the agency designs a specific security plan for each event. “These measures are rigorously tested during the advance process and were critical in mitigating the threat and preventing significant harm,” he said.

The perimeter at the event had multiple layers, and not all are obvious to people in the venue, which is intentional. In this instance, the metal detectors formed the outer perimeter of the secure area. Just past the screening, law enforcement officers were posted to make sure no one who should not proceed to the ballroom got through. Inside the ballroom, Secret Service counterassault teams were positioned to respond should something happen, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the plan who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. And some agents were dressed as waiters to blend in as they looked around the room.

“You had a person try to gain entrance from a dirty area, an unsecure area, into a secure area, and he was apprehended before he could actually enter into the event,” said Michael R. Centrella, a former assistant director of the Secret Service. “So the layer of protection, the way the security plan was laid out, the Secret Service did exactly how the plan should go, and the individual was apprehended before ever gaining entrance.”

The president has vowed to hold the event again in the next month, and already some have questioned whether the security perimeter for that gathering should be pushed farther out. In practice, that would mean that if someone again tried to rush past agents, that confrontation would happen outside the building, not inside it. Mr. Eckloff said that making the perimeter too large could have the unintended effect of diluting security presence where it is most needed.

The Washington Hilton, where

the gala dinner has long been held

, is a difficult venue for the Secret Service to secure because it is so large, a public space and so many people come and go — to and from their rooms and the hotel itself. The makeup of the event raises the stakes because it can include the entire line of succession to the preside