Cole Tomas Allen on Thursday told a judge he was waiving his right to challenge his detention in jail — for now — on charges of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last Saturday night.
Allen’s waiver came a day after his defense team, in a court filing, sought his release on bond pending trial, and after prosecutors in their own filing laid out arguments for why he should remain in jail.
“He’s conceding detention at this time,” Allen’s lawyer, Tezira Abe, told Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday.
Abe said Allen, who did not enter a plea at the hearing, was reserving his right to challenge his detention at a future date.
Abe told Upadhyaya that she and Allen’s other lawyer had difficulty meeting with the defendant over the past several days, but spoke to him on Thursday morning before the hearing.
Allen, a 31-year-old California resident, is charged with trying to assassinate Trump, transportation of a firearm or ammunition in interstate commerce and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.
Upadhyaya on Thursday addressed Allen, asking him to confirm that his lawyers had informed him of “the consequences of conceding to detention at this time.”
“Yes, your honor,” Allen answered in a hushed tone.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Jones then asked Upadhyaya for permission to present evidence in support of the motion for detention because Allen might revisit that issue in the future.
“What audience is your supplemental information for?” Upadhyaya asked. “I have noted that he concedes to detention … what is the purpose of the government putting additional information on the record?”
Jones replied that he wanted to offer the evidence on Thursday because it was efficient.
“That is a completely inefficient way of proceeding,” the judge shot back, noting that if Allen challenged his detention in the future, prosecutors would have to present evidence to a federal district court judge to rebut it.
“You would be doing your exact same presentation all over again,” Upadhyaya said, who appeared irritated by the prosecutor’s request.
“I’m denying the government’s request. It’s truly unprecedented,” the judge said.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office in its court filing on Wednesday had urged Upadhyaya to keep Allen locked up, saying, “There is no condition or combination of conditions that would reasonably assure the community’s safety if the defendant were released pending trial.”
Prosecution in that filing noted he had traveled from Los Angeles on Amtrak trains with a cache of weapons and that he had checked for information online about the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner after Trump announced plans to attend.
Allen was tackled by Secret Service agents after running through a security checkpoint outside the Washington Hilton’s ballroom, where Trump, Vice President JD Vance and top Trump administration officials were dining with hundreds of journalists and other guests. Allen was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives, prosecutors said.
Allen also had written a document that he sent to family members in which he said, “Administration officials … are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” prosecutors noted.
“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,” Allen wrote.
— MS NOW’s Fallon Gallagher contributed to this article
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