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Investigators Seeking Attacker’s Motive Comb Through an Archive of Posts
Federal authorities are looking into whether Cole Tomas Allen posted on Bluesky as “coldforce,” who wrote and promoted liberal views that did not stand out on the left-leaning platform.
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Federal authorities searched a house connected to Cole Tomas Allen in Torrance, Calif.
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Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press
By
Amy Qin
and
Aric Toler
April 27, 2026,
7:11 p.m. ET
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The internet poster called President Trump a “sociopathic mob boss,” said the administration “lies like it breathes” and accused Democratic leadership of engaging in “‘bipartisanship’ with Nazis.”
Federal authorities are looking into whether the man at the keyboard who used the name “coldforce” may have been
Cole Tomas Allen
, who was
charged Monday
with trying to assassinate President Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
They are seeking to understand better what may have motivated Mr. Allen, 31, whom they have accused of coming to Washington with a pump-action shotgun, a handgun and three knives to attack the White House Correspondents’ dinner.
A review of the user’s archived posts on Bluesky, a social media platform popular among left-leaning users, shows that the account often wrote or promoted posts that took liberal positions on political issues.
Most posts, which begin in late 2024, do not advocate violence and are unremarkable on the liberal forum. The user posted most frequently about the war in Ukraine, expressing frustration with the Trump administration for “betraying” allies. Recently, the account was also writing or sharing posts about what the writer called a “dumbass” war in Iran and the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
But some posts suggested a sense that the American system was no longer working.
In May 2025, the user accused the three branches of government of engaging in “treasonous behavior” and called it a “civic virtue issue, basically a moral issue, and that’s not fixable with laws.”
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