Would-be Trump assassin Cole Allen’s claim that there was extremely lax security at the event he targeted was seemingly substantiated by multiple attendees’ posts to social media.
The security presence at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner which featured President Trump showed an “insane” level of “incompetence,” Allen wrote in a manifesto he sent to family members shortly before he opened fire, The New York Post first reported. Firsthand accounts of media figures and others who attended the annual glitzy event at the Washington Hilton hotel also pointed to seemingly lenient security measures and minimal vetting of guests.
“Security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before,” Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from California who faces two preliminary federal charges, wrote in his manifesto, according to an excerpt posted by Reuters’s chief national security reporter Phil Stewart.
“Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed shit,” continued the alleged shooter’s screed, in which he had dubbed himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin.”