DOJ files mirror-selfie evidence and target list as Cole Allen pleads not guilty to attempting to assassinate Trump at Correspondents' dinner

The DOJ memorandum filed Wednesday in support of pretrial detention against Cole Tomas Allen, 31, includes a mirror selfie the suspect took in his Washington Hilton room at roughly 20:03 EST on April 25 -- a half-hour before he charged the Terrace Level screening checkpoint with a raised pump-action shotgun. Prosecutors say Allen was wearing a black dress shirt and red tie, with a leather bag of ammunition "consistent in appearance with the ammunition-filled bag later recovered from his person", the butt of a handgun visible in a shoulder holster, a sheathed knife, pliers and wire cutters around his belt. Over the next thirty minutes the filing alleges he checked websites for live coverage of the dinner, searched "trump white house correspondents dinner" online, and sent prescheduled emails carrying an "Apology and Explanation" attachment.

The attachment named officials of the administration as targets "from highest-ranking to lowest" -- "I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary" -- and accused Trump in an open letter as "a pedophile, rapist and traitor". After the emails were sent, Allen left the room and discarded a long black coat that had concealed the shotgun. "Shortly thereafter, the defendant rushed the screening checkpoint on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton with a raised shotgun," the memo states; he sprinted through a metal detector with the shotgun raised in both hands.

The DOJ inventoried the weaponry: a Mossberg 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with multiple cartridges, a Rock Island Armory 1911 .38-caliber semiautomatic with 10 rounds, two additional handgun magazines, two knives, four daggers, needlenose pliers, and wire cutters. A Secret Service agent was shot but not seriously wounded. Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, cabinet members and other White House officials were rushed from the Washington Hilton ballroom after gunfire; Allen has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Allen left his Torrance, California home on April 21, prosecutors say, travelling by train to Chicago before continuing to Washington; phone records they cite include an observation note he kept on the journey: "[t]he southwest desert in spring Distant wind turbines looming like snowy mountains across the hazy NM desert". Prosecutors argue his actions were "premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death" and that there is "no condition or combination of conditions that will reasonably assure the safety of other people or the community" if he is released. Beyond the attempted-assassination charge, which carries a life sentence, Allen faces transportation of a firearm between states to commit a felony and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence -- both with maximum 10-year sentences. The DOJ's brief said Allen would have brought about "one of the darkest days in American history" had he succeeded.