The man who allegedly attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump and top administration officials was motivated in large part by the war with Iran, according to an intelligence report.
A preliminary report by the Department of Homeland Security found that Cole Allen, the would-be assassin who stormed the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month, was so incensed by the Middle East conflict that it “may have contributed to his decision to conduct the attack,” according to the report.
The documents were obtained through open records requests by the national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People, which shared them with the Beast. Marked “Critical Incident Note,” the assessment cited 31-year-old Allen’s social media posts as evidence of his fury over Trump and Israel’s war, which they launched in coordination on Feb. 28.
So far, 3,375 people within Iran have died in the conflict, along with 2,702 in Lebanon and 28 in the Gulf states, Al Jazeera reported. Thirteen U.S. service members are also among the dead.
A DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast: “DHS shares Critical Incident Notes to quickly communicate information and intelligence to federal, state, and local authorities. These reports notify our partners of the latest available information following significant incidents that have impacts to homeland security. DHS does not publicly comment on the information contained in internal law enforcement communications.”
Allen, a California resident, traveled by train from his home state—where he lives in the Los Angeles area and works as a teacher—to Washington, D.C., with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives.
Moments before he attempted to carry out the attack at the Washington Hilton, Allen sent a 1,052-word manifesto to his family outlining an alleged plan to kill Trump and top administration officials.
“Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” he wrote.
“I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” Allen wrote.
The former teacher and mechanical engineer has been indicted on four criminal counts: attempting to assassinate the President of the United States; transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce; discharging a firearm during a violent crime; and assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon. Allen has not yet entered a plea.
An officer was struck during the April 25 incident but was wearing a bulletproof vest and was unharmed. Whether Allen fired the bullet that hit the officer is not explicitly stated in the indictment. “As alleged in today’s indictment, the heavily armed defendant rushed security and shot a Secret Service Officer in an attempt to assassinate President Trump—but was stopped thanks to the courageous and immediate response from law enforcement,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
