(WASHINGTON) — Cole Allen, the suspect in the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooting, conceded to remain detained pending further legal proceedings in his case, his attorney said at his detention hearing on Thursday.
The government argued earlier that Allen poses a grave risk of danger to the public for allegedly seeking to carry out an attack at Saturday’s dinner.
“This was a planned attack of unfathomable malice that risked the lives of hundreds of people whose only transgression was attending an annual event celebrating the media and featuring the President of the United States,” prosecutors said in a filing on Wednesday. “It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence.”
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
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