The US government has evidence that a federal agent was shot by the suspect during an alleged recent attempt to assassinate Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, said on Sunday.
“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro said on CNN.
The suspect in the attack, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, allegedly ran past a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton hotel where the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was being held.
The attacker then fired a shotgun outside the doors leading into the ballroom where the US president, first lady Melania Trump and several senior cabinet members had gathered along with hundreds of journalists and their guests.
Allen was charged last week with three federal crimes, including attempting to assassinate the president.
Allen had shared social media posts comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler and encouraged others critical of his presidency to purchase guns, according to CNN. That chimes with a document that Allen allegedly sent to family members before the attack in which he criticized Trump administration policies, slammed security at the Hilton and apologized to his family for his actions.
Prosecutors alleged in legal filings last week that Allen traveled by train from California to Washington armed with the shotgun, a .38-caliber pistol as well as knives and daggers in order to carry out the attack.
Allen was “willing to commit a mass shooting inside a room full of the highest-ranking officials in the US government”, the filing said.
Pirro added that a grand jury was likely to meet later this week in the case. She has previously stated: “There’s no question that once we get into the grand jury there will be many, many more charges.”
In papers filed to court on Sunday it was also revealed that Allen is no longer on suicide watch.
