The Brief | The "Friendly Federal Assassin" Came for the Cabinet
Plus: King Charles lands anyway, one guest committed to a burrata salad, a Bluesky timeline became a manifesto, and the SPLC has a very bad week.
It’s Monday!
Another wild weekend, a third assassination attempt on the President, and a pivot of denial from the left.
Also, this morning I realized I forgot the Sunday Brief yesterday. I stayed up late covering the THIRD assassination attempt on Trump and forgot to queue up the Sunday Brief. Apologies.
Let’s get into the news.
In today’s Brief:
A Caltech grad with a Kamala donation history opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. We have his manifesto.
Cole Allen mailed his “Friendly Federal Assassin” letter to his family ten minutes before pulling the trigger.
His Bluesky timeline reads like every blue-check post you’ve muted this year.
King Charles and Queen Camilla still land in D.C. today. State dinner Tuesday. The show goes on.
One guy at the dinner kept eating during the lockdown. Folk hero status.
Assassination Attempt At The WHCA Dinner
Saturday night, a third assassination attempt was made on President Trump. The President, Vice President, and most of the Cabinet were seated for the WHCA Dinner at the Washington Hilton. A 31-year-old man from Torrance, California, charged through the metal detectors outside the ballroom and started firing.
CBS’s frame-by-frame timeline clocks the chaos at 8:34 p.m.: shots fired, Secret Service grabs Vance four seconds before pulling Trump from the dais, Stephen Miller throws himself in front of his pregnant wife, RFK Jr.’s detail swarms the table. Trump posted on Truth Social by 9:17. The dinner was canceled by 9:39. By midnight, the suspect had a name.
A Secret Service officer was hit. The vest stopped the round. He's expected to be okay. He also hasn't been paid in 72 days, because Senate Democrats are still blocking the DHS funding bill and the Secret Service runs through DHS. Worth remembering.
Yashar Ali @yashar Getty Images’ @andyharnik captures the moment the Vice President and President were evacuated from the dais at the White House Correspondents Dinner. You can see the Secret Service grabbing Vance by his jacket to pull him away.
Trump wanted to keep going. Law enforcement said no. Protocol required clearing the room. Dinner canceled. 30 minutes later, he was in the White House Briefing Room, fielding questions from the same press corps that had just been evacuated from the Hilton.
Sunday morning, Trump told reporters the silver lining was Democrats waving to him on the way out. He wants to reschedule inside 30 days.
Cole Allen is being arraigned in federal court today on at least two charges to start: using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. More are expected. The prosecutor on the case is U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Yes, that Jeanine Pirro. The universe has a sense of humor.
Don’t Get Between A Man and His Dinner
You’ve already seen the clip. While Secret Service agents had their guns drawn and guests dove under tablecloths, one guy at the table reached up, scooped his food, and kept eating.
Gunz @TheGunzShow Shout out to THIS guy who decided to take a spoonful of his mashed potatoes while ducking and covering after tonight’s WHCD shooting. No way he was passing up on that free food, even with Secret Service having their guns drawn out.
His name is Michael Glantz. He’s a talent agent at Creative Artists Agency, and his client list includes Wolf Blitzer, who got knocked over in the chaos and was apparently the only thing Glantz was actually worried about. Everything else was burrata salad.
Glantz told the New York Times he didn’t dive for the floor because he has a bad back and is “a hygiene freak.” His exact words: “There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor.”
Folk hero confirmed. Get this man a plate to go.
Who Is Cole Allen
The biographical detail will not match the narrative the press is reaching for. Cole Thomas Allen, 31. Caltech graduate, mechanical engineering, class of 2017. Master’s in computer science from Cal State Dominguez Hills, 2025. C2 Education tutor. Named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024. A classmate told the Wall Street Journal he was “even more nerdy” than the average Caltech kid. “Always nice and kind to people.”
He also donated to Kamala Harris, attended at least one No Kings protest, and was affiliated with a group called The Wide Awakes. He bought the Maverick 12-gauge from Turner’s Outdoorsman in Torrance last August. The Armscor pistol came from a shop in Lawndale the prior October. He stored both at his parents’ house and trained at a range.
He took a train across the country with his weapons. He was reportedly a guest at the Hilton where the dinner was held, having checked in the day before.
By Sunday morning, Barack Obama was on X telling the country we “don’t yet have the details about the motives behind last night’s shooting.” The manifesto had been public for half a day by then. The shooter’s own brother had already handed the email to Connecticut police before the gunfire ever started.
The motive isn’t unclear. It’s inconvenient, Barry.
Democrats spent ten years calling Trump an existential threat to the Republic and comparing him to Hitler. A Caltech-grad Kamala donor with a Bluesky timeline took the rhetoric at face value, then mailed his family a manifesto on his way to kill the Cabinet. And the most recent Democratic president still wants you to believe the motive is a mystery.
The Manifesto Reads Like a Bluesky Timeline
Ten minutes before opening fire, Allen emailed a 1,052-word manifesto to his family. He signed it Cole “coldForce” “Friendly Federal Assassin” Allen. His brother called Connecticut police as soon as he opened it. Why Connecticut is unclear.
The document named Trump administration officials as targets, ranked highest to lowest. FBI Director Kash Patel was excluded from the list. Allen wrote that he chose buckshot to keep the casualty count down, but if he had to take everyone, he would, because they were “complicit.” He invoked Christian faith to justify the killing. He preemptively rebutted the predictable objections about race and theology. He mocked Secret Service for “incompetent” hotel security.
His Bluesky account under the handle coldforce.bsky.social was active from November 2024 until the morning of the attack. The Free Beacon pulled what he was boosting:
“the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system.”
He boosted “Abolish ICE” posts. He called an immigration facility a “concentration camp.” Elon Musk got the standard Nazi treatment. Jake Tapper’s First Amendment pocket square was apparently fascist accessorizing. The account was suspended after the shooting.
The manifesto was every anti-Trump social media narrative come to life. Hard to argue.
Robert Sterling pulled the relevant polling and posted it Saturday:
Robert Sterling @RobertMSterling 25% of very liberal people say political violence can “sometimes be justified.” Among very conservative people it’s just 3%. In other words, the far left is 8x more likely to support political violence as the far right. Stop pretending this is a “both sides” problem. It’s not.
Save that one for the next “stochastic terrorism” lecture.
King Charles Lands Today Anyway
The royals are still coming. Buckingham Palace confirmed Sunday the visit will proceed. King Charles and Queen Camilla touch down in D.C. today for a four-day swing built around the 250th anniversary of American independence.
The itinerary: private tea and a garden party with the Trumps tonight, white-tie state dinner Tuesday at the White House. Charles addresses a joint session of Congress Tuesday morning, the first time a sitting British monarch has done that. Then up to New York Wednesday for a 9/11 Memorial visit with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Mayor Bloomberg. Closing in Virginia for Appalachian cultural performances and a climate roundtable with indigenous groups before flying out to Barbados.
The backdrop is uglier than the curtsies suggest. Trump and PM Keir Starmer are openly feuding over Iran. Trump called the British aircraft carriers “toys” earlier this month. A handful of House members are publicly demanding Prince Andrew testify about Epstein. Awkward small talk to come.
But the show goes on. After watching the President of the United States get evacuated from a podium 36 hours earlier, the optics of a state dinner this week land different. The man at the metal detector wanted the Cabinet dead. The Cabinet is hosting the King.
Quick Rundown
The SPLC just got federally indicted. Wire fraud, false statements, money laundering. Prosecutors say the Southern Poverty Law Center funneled more than $3 million in donor cash to people tied to violent extremist groups (KKK, neo-Nazi outfits) through shell companies between 2014 and 2023. One informant they paid helped plan the 2017 Charlottesville rally. Jim Jordan also wants their internal documents by April 30. The FBI cited SPLC in at least 13 documents, including the Richmond memo flagging traditional Catholics as extremists. Quiet story for now. Give it a minute.
Iran talks stall, Pakistan trip canceled. Trump pulled the plug on the U.S. delegation’s Pakistan trip Friday after telling Tehran they can call him if they want to talk. Within ten minutes of the announcement, Iran sent over an improved proposal. He’s still saying no.
The White House ballroom pitch returns. Within 24 hours of the shooting, the President pointed to the security failure at the Hilton as the case for his proposed White House ballroom. Read that as you will.
Let’s Talk About It
If the WHCA shooter had been a MAGA voter who’d attended a Trump rally and posted right-wing memes, how long would the wall-to-wall coverage last? Be honest.
Can you really blame the burrata salad guy? If that’s potentially your last meal on earth, you could do a lot worse than burrata.
Drop your takes in the comments. See you Wednesday. Stay nosy.
The Brief publishes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Forward to someone who needs to understand what’s actually happening.
Barry Barrack Obama 🤣 cracking me up
So crazy that the would-be assassin made it through all the security with 2 guns, one a shotgun?! And knives
And love/hate the detail of the security guard who took the bullet to the vest (thankfully) is still not receiving pay during this dem induced shutdown, I didn’t know that was still grinding on! And still he stepped into the breach! 🫶🏼☮️