The suspected shooter at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is a former Teacher of the Month, who acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said likely set out to target members of the Trump administration and possibly President Donald Trump.
While authorities have yet to publicly name the suspect in custody, two law enforcement sources familiar with the matter told The Associated Press his name is Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old game developer and teacher from Torrance, California. Officials are still working to pin down the shooter’s motive, but Trump in a Fox News interview Sunday said he had written a “manifesto” that was “strongly anti-Christian.”
Blanche said officials believe the shooter traveled by train with knives and guns from California to Chicago and then to Washington D.C., where he was a guest at the Washington Hilton, the site of the correspondents’ dinner. “It does appear that he did in fact set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Blanche added that the suspect is not cooperating with law enforcement. “I want to be careful the way I talk around that, but no, at this point we do not have somebody who’s cooperating,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
Secret Service agents move across the ballroom Saturday during a shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. Andrew Harnik via Getty Images
Video footage from Saturday night shows Trump sitting on stage at the dinner as gunshots are heard. A few seconds later, Secret Service agents instruct him and others to duck and then they quickly usher him off the stage. The dinner’s guests, some of the nation’s top reporters, can be seen ducking under their tables. Trump posted security footage of the incident in which the shooter can be seen running past police and headed toward the ballroom before police take him down. One officer was shot, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest and is expected to be OK. The shooter was not wounded, but he was transported to a hospital for evaluation. The shooter reportedly sent his writings, which a law enforcement official told The AP had grievances against the Trump administration, to family members just minutes before the shooting.
Before a Facebook account apparently belonging to the suspect was taken down, it showed little insight into Allen’s life. The bio read, “MecE, indie game dev, amateur entomologist, casual composter, and occasional artist.” A 2019 post on that social media profile revealed he trademarked the word “Bohrdom” in relation to a video game of the same name. A December 2024 post from C2 Education of Torrance, a tutoring and test prep center, revealed that Allen was named “December Teacher of the Month.”
A LinkedIn page purportedly connected to him said he was a teaching assistant at Caltech from 2016 to 2017. In 2025, he earned his master’s degree in computer science from California State University-Dominguez Hills. His LinkedIn bio reads “Mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.”
Trump holds a press conference at the White House shortly after a shooting near the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Anadolu via Getty Images
The shooter reportedly legally bought guns in 2023 and 2025. He bought an Armscor semiautomatic pistol in October 2023 and a Maverick 12-gauge shotgun in August 2025, which was used in Saturday’s shooting, according to CBS News. Police have recovered both firearms. Blanche called the Secret Service agents’ response a “massive security success story” because the shooter “barely breached the perimeter.”
Police surrounded Allen’s California home Saturday night, waiting for a search warrant to enter. Allen is expected to be charged Monday. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Saturday night that the suspect is being charged with two counts, including using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.
