Politics
Cole Allen case reveals Secret Service failures that could have led to tragedy at D.C. gala
According to Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and other top administration officials, the U.S. Secret Service did a fine job protecting President Trump and Cabinet members from the gunman who breached the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner Saturday.
“That horrible act was stopped because of the courage and professionalism of law enforcement — the officers who responded without hesitation and did their jobs as they were trained to do,” Blanche said Monday.
However, according to a detailed accounting filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors in the criminal case against suspect Cole Tomas Allen, the performance of the nation’s preeminent protection agency was marred by inattentiveness and misfires and saved by “extraordinary good fortune” and the gunman falling to the ground.
“The defendant, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol, two knives, four daggers, and enough ammunition to take dozens of lives, was apprehended by [Secret Service] officers mere feet away from the ballroom where his primary target was located, along with other members of the Cabinet,” prosecutors wrote Wednesday, in a filing arguing for Allen to be held in detention pending trial on one charge of trying to kill the president and two firearms charges.
Contradicting a prior claim by Blanche that officers had “promptly tackled and detained” Allen, prosecutors wrote that the 31-year-old tutor from Torrance simply “fell to the ground” after blowing past a team of agents just two open flights of stairs from the ballroom.
They wrote that one officer fired at Allen five times, but never hit him.
The same officer saw Allen fire his shotgun “in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom,” prosecutors wrote, and officers later discovered “one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube.”
Prosecutors said nothing about the Secret Service officer who Blanche said was shot in his ballistic vest during the incident — adding to speculation that the officer may have been shot not by Allen, but by a fellow officer, or not at all.
Agency critiqued before
In all, the court filing brought further into focus a chaotic Secret Service response that appeared flawed from the start, including in a video Trump posted shortly after the incident in which agents appeared to be idling around an unobstructed entrance when Allen ran past them.
It added to concerns that law enforcement, security experts and members of Congress had raised about the performance of an agency that has been repeatedly called on to improve after previous attempts on Trump’s life. At a 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., a gunman fired a bullet that grazed Trump’s ear, and that same year, another assailant prepared to shoot him from the unsecured perimeter of a Florida golf course.
Robert D’Amico, a former FBI deputy chief of operations for hostage rescue teams who is now a security consultant, said the security failures he saw in the Secret Service’s preparation for Saturday’s dinner — including its failure to set up basic barriers to prevent people from sprinting into the secured area — were stunning, especially given the past threats and the fact the nation is at war with Iran.
“It’s for a person like Trump, who’s had two assassination attempts before and is at war with Iran, which has terrorist training and proxies up, and you still don’t have the basics?” D’Amico said. “It’s unfathomable.”
Other concerns have been voiced by members of Congress, including Republicans.
The House Oversight Committee has requested a briefing from the Secret Service, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which also investigated the Butler incident.
In a letter urging the hearing, Hawley said the latest incident “raises questions about presidential security arrangements, potential resource needs, and the degree to which reforms previously proposed by Congress have been adopted.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News that from “a layman’s perspective,” event security “looked a little lax in terms of getting into the building,” and that it “doesn’t sound like it was sufficient.”
Sean M. Curran, director of the Secret Service, has been on Capitol Hill in recent days briefing lawmakers.
He told CBS News that agents did a “great job,” but also that the incident remains under review. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would be leading discussions on potential updates to Secret Service plans for securing the president.
Fear of graver threats
Blanche has argued that proof of the Secret Service’s effectiveness at the press gala was in the result: Allen was stopped, Trump and other officials were unharmed and no one was killed, despite Allen’s alleged intent.
However, the concerns being raised have to do with the vulnerabilities that were exposed as much as those that were exploited.
Because the dinner was not designated a major “national special security event” — such as a political convention — there were no trained counterassault agents on standby to prevent a breach or to take down a person with a weapon, officials have said.
Law enforcement experts said that was clearly a mistake given so many top officials — Trump, Johnson, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others — were in the room.
Such a gathering could have been targeted by foreign adversaries or others with far more experience, less regard for human life and much greater firepower than Allen, experts said.
“Most of my military friends are all saying the same thing,” said D’Amico, who is also a former infantry platoon commander in the U.S. Marines. “If you had had a team of three or four [gunmen], they would have gotten to [Trump].’”
In the initial criminal complaint against Allen, prosecutors included the text of an email Allen sent to family just as he was preparing to rush the security perimeter, in which he allegedly wrote that he had chosen to use buckshot in order to “minimize casualties” and prevent bystanders from being wounded by more powerful bullets penetrating walls.
He also allegedly wrote that he was willing to “go through most everyone” at the event to get to top administration officials, but that guests and hotel staff were “not targets at all.”
In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors describe Allen’s actions as “premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death,” and say he was “laden with weapons” as he breached security. But none of those weapons included assault-style rifles that can fire bullets rapidly and have been used to kill civilians in mass shootings across the country for years.
The filing described Allen — a Caltech graduate and high school tutor — not as some trained tactical expert, but as an ideologue who spent part of his Amtrak journey from California to Washington waxing poetic about the landscape around him, describing Pennsylvania’s woods as “vast fairy lands filled with tiny trickling creeks in spring.”
Could have been worse
D’Amico said he and other Marines learned early on in Iraq that entrances to secured locations have to be designed in a “serpentine” fashion, forcing anyone approaching to move more slowly through the area and giving security officers more time to assess their intentions. And at an event the size of the correspondents’ dinner, with so many top officials gathered in a public hotel, you would want to make entrances “even more difficult.”
And yet no barriers seemed to be in place at the event, he said — something anyone trained more than Allen could have capitalized on.
“If they just had come through in a team of three or four who were coordinated and trained, there absolutely would have been penetration into the ballroom,” D’Amico said. “It would have been a gunfight.”
Allen himself questioned the security at the event, according to court records, allegedly writing that he had walked into the Washington Hilton with multiple weapons and no one considered “the possibility that I could be a threat.”
He wrote that if he “was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen,” he “could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed” — referring to a powerful machine gun.
“It is fortunate he was only armed with what he had,” said Ed Obayashi, a California law enforcement expert on use of force.
Politics
DOJ expands indictment against SPLC, alleging $4M secretly funneled to KKK and extremist groups
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The Department of Justice last month announced an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), alleging that the civil rights nonprofit defrauded donors by secretly paying informants associated with extremist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan.
A federal grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment in April charging the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of making false statements to a federally insured bank and one count of conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, according to the Justice Department.
The superseding indictment retains those charges while expanding on the alleged misconduct.
According to the DOJ, the SPLC “secretly funneled” more than $3 million in donor funds between 2014 and 2023 to numerous individuals associated with extremist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the National Socialist Movement, participants in the Unite the Right rally and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club.
NEO-NAZIS, ‘SADISTIC’ BIKERS AND CHARLOTTESVILLE ORGANIZER: 5 OF THE MOST SHOCKING SPLC INFORMANTS
The Southern Poverty Law Center has widespread influence in education. FILE: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, left, and SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair are shown in a split image as the Justice Department pursues charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images; USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images)
The original indictment alleged approximately $3 million in payments between 2014 and 2023.
“The SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website,” the indictment states.
Prosecutors further allege the SPLC opened bank accounts tied to fictitious entities in order to conceal donor funds that were allegedly routed to confidential sources.
MIKE DAVIS: SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: A TALE OF A RACISM SCAM
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) building seen in March 2020 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images)
According to the indictment, the SPLC began operating a covert informant network in the 1980s, and between 2014 and 2023 allegedly paid those sources in a clandestine manner.
The DOJ alleges an SPLC employee instead encouraged the pair to remain involved and offered them a monthly salary of $1,200.
The two subsequently agreed to remain in the organization, according to the indictment.
DR. BEN CARSON: I KNOW HOW BAD THE SPLC WAS, IT CAME AFTER ME AND PUT ME AT RISK
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke during a press conference alongside FBI Director Kash Patel at the Department of Justice on April 21, 2026, in Washington, D.C., following the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Prosecutors allege an SPLC employee instructed the individuals to claim they worked for a company called Rare Books and helped college students with research and writing assignments if anyone questioned the source of their income.
The indictment alleges donor funds were used to pay both individuals through SPLC accounts.
According to prosecutors, the pair were also reimbursed for expenses related to Ku Klux Klan activities, including cross-burning events and associated costs such as wood and fuel.
One of the individuals is also accused of recruiting new members using donor-funded payments. The indictment further alleges the SPLC knew donor funds were used to purchase materials for Ku Klux Klan garments.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, attorney Abbe Lowell, who represents the SPLC, denied the allegations.
A composite image shows Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche overlaid on photographs of the Department of Justice and FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“This apparent superseding indictment attempts to shore up the flaws in the initial charges, but it changes nothing,” Lowell said.
“The SPLC did not lie to its donors, it did not mislead banks it did business with, and its informant program prevented violence and saved lives,” he continued.
“It appears the Justice Department shared the indictment with media before it was unsealed by the court – another example of the government’s troubling handling of this case.”
“We will be addressing these irregularities with the court and look forward to presenting the truth at trial,” he added.
NONPROFIT REVENUE TOTALS SURGE AMID GROWING SCRUTINY AFTER MAJOR FRAUD CASES
SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair speaks during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., on March 5, 2026. (Jake Crandall/Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
The superseding indictment also notes that the SPLC’s reported revenue increased from roughly $38.7 million in 2010 to more than $129 million in 2023, an increase of approximately 233%.
According to the filing, the organization’s net assets grew from approximately $238 million to nearly $787 million during the same period.
The SPLC is a longtime nonprofit organization that says it combats white supremacy and extremism through research, reporting and monitoring efforts intended to assist law enforcement and the public.
During a news conference announcing the original indictment, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche alleged the SPLC paid members of extremist groups so it could generate “work product” documenting their activities.
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“To that end, [SPLC] was doing the exact opposite of what it told its donors it was doing – not dismantling extremism but funding it,” Blanche said.
Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch, David Spunt, Jake Gibson and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.
Buoyed by a new Congressional map favoring their party, California Democrats were eyeing Tuesday’s primary elections as a critical first step toward flipping a handful of House seats and taking back power in Washington.
Results from California’s massive and slow-moving election process were not immediately clear late Tuesday, as polls closed and mail ballots continued to be processed and counted. Still, Democrats were bullish about their chances of advancing candidates to November’s general election in all five districts that were redrawn in their favor as a result of last year’s Proposition 50 ballot measure.
“The path to winning back the House starts with voting in the June 2nd primary,” the California Democratic Party posted online Monday.
Meanwhile, California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin urged Republican voters to make their own voices heard too.
“Like President Trump said, we need to make it too big to rig,” Rankin said on “The Benny Show.” “We need to swamp the vote.”
One of the most closely watched races was in the redrawn 22nd Congressional District in the Central Valley, where incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) is facing challenges from moderate Assemblymember Jasmeet Kaur Bains (D-Delano) and progressive college professor Randy Villegas.
Another closely watched race was in the redrawn 48th Congressional District in San Diego and Riverside counties, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) decided to retire rather than run for reelection, and where Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond — who is endorsed by Trump — is running against a pack of Democrats.
Prop. 50 — which Californians passed with nearly 65% of the vote a year ago — was California Democrats’ response to Texas Republicans redrawing their state’s Congressional maps in the GOP’s favor, at President Trump’s behest. It was also the only major Democratic counterpunch in the wider mid-decade redistricting brawl that has spread across the country in the last year.
Experts expect the redistricting battle to deliver a net gain of a handful or more House seats to Republicans. But Democrats could gain even more ground given Trump’s lousy approval ratings and the long history of midterm election losses for the president’s party.
Combined, those factors make the battle for control of the House incredibly close, which in turn makes the five seats up for grabs in California pivotal — and potentially decisive.
Tuesday’s primaries won’t determine if any of those five seats will indeed flip parties in November. However, the primaries will define those head-to-head races to come and better inform the odds of Democrats toppling Republican incumbents, experts said.
In addition to flipping the seats currently held by Valadao and Issa, Democrats are hoping to pick up three additional seats.
In the 1st Congressional District — which after Prop. 50 lost rural reaches of northeast California and picked up liberal North Bay communities — various candidates were vying for the seat long held by the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale), who died in January. They include Democratic state Sen. Mike McGuire and Republican Assemblymember James Gallagher, who is endorsed by Trump.
Voters from the existing district are also voting in a special election Tuesday to fill the remainder of LaMalfa’s term.
In the 3rd Congressional District, which lost an eastern rural stretch along Nevada and now holds more tightly to the Sacramento suburbs, Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) — who currently represents a different district — is running to remain in Congress in a new seat.
Meanwhile, the 3rd Congressional District’s incumbent, Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Rocklin), is seeking to do the opposite. He quit the Republican Party, became an independent and is now running for Bera’s current seat in Congressional District 6, which includes the city of Sacramento and Placer County suburbs.
In the 41st Congressional District, which became more liberal after Prop. 50 by losing voters in Riverside County and gaining them in Los Angeles County, a slate of candidates — including Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Whittier), who currently represents a different district — are running to replace Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona). Calvert, a 17-term incumbent, decided to run in the neighboring 40th Congressional District instead.
In the 40th Congressional District, which covers a swath of inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, incumbent Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) is now going head-to-head with Calvert, while also facing several Democratic challengers.
Other districts that were not part of the Prop. 50 shuffle are also attracting attention.
In the 11th Congressional District in San Francisco, several Democratic candidates are vying to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the retiring former House Speaker, including state Sen. Scott Wiener; tech millionaire and Democratic political operative Saikat Chakrabarti; and Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors who Pelosi endorsed.
Democrats are also closely watching several races where younger Democrats and progressives are challenging older incumbent Democrats, and where newer Democratic incumbents are seeking to hold onto their seats in relatively competitive districts.
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LOS ANGELES — Outside a Bristol Farms market in LA’s Westchester neighborhood, residents who spoke to Fox News Digital all agreed that homelessness is a top problem facing the city, but disagreed on which mayoral candidate is the right choice to clean it up.
“Love him,” Shelley Zuckerman said about reality television star and independent candidate Spencer Pratt, adding that homelessness is a main motivator of her support for the reality TV star’s mayoral run.
“The fact that he’s not a politician, so he may or may not be a liar, we don’t know that yet, and I know that he wants to do something for LA that the politicians have been saying they’re going to do and then don’t,” Zuckerman added. “And I know politics works, that once you get in there you can’t always do what you want to do, but at least he’s got the passion.”
SPENCER PRATT SAYS HIS POLICY WILL FORCE HOMELESS OUT OF LA AND INTO CITIES LIKE SEATTLE
Los Angeles residents say homelessness is the top problem facing the city as they head to the polls for the mayoral primary. (Fox News Digital)
When asked if crime was a motivating factor to vote for Pratt, Zuckerman’s husband Saul responded, “Of course.”
The couple says they are supporting Republican Steve Hilton for governor.
Patrick Reynolds, who lives in the neighborhood, said he is “not happy with any of the candidates” and called Pratt a “clown” before saying he voted for incumbent Mayor Karen Bass “a little reluctantly.”
Homelessness has been a top-of-mind concern for voters in Los Angeles, and despite Bass being mayor for the last four years, Reynolds said he believes she’s the best choice on that front.
Reynolds, who said he is supporting billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer for governor, spoke at length about the problems with homelessness, including a local park he said has become “too dangerous” to visit in recent years.
KAREN BASS GRILLED OVER BROKEN HOMELESSNESS PROMISE, BLAMES BUREAUCRACY FOR SLOWED PROGRESS
Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt hosts a campaign block party on 10th Avenue in Los Angeles on May 20, 2026. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“Homelessness for sure,” a woman named Diane, who said she voted for Bass, told Fox News Digital, “That’s number one on my list, and I think she’s tried very hard to fix that problem. It’s a big problem, I know. And I just think she is down to earth. She’s not some rich billionaire, which I appreciate.”
Diane said she is supporting former Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who served in the Biden administration, for governor because he is a “good guy.”
“I like that he is an immigrant and that he has worked his way up in this world,” Diane said. “I think he has a good sensibility. I like also that he isn’t a billionaire. I can relate to him.”
Dan Madden, a resident of nearby Manhattan Beach, told Fox News Digital that if he could vote in LA proper, he’d go with Pratt.
WHO IS TOM STEYER? ANTI-ICE BILLIONAIRE IN CA GOVERNOR’S RACE FACES SCRUTINY OVER DETENTION INVESTMENTS
A Los Angeles city councilwoman and progressive candidate for mayor Nithya Raman, left, pictured alongside incumbent mayor Karen Bass, right. (Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“That’d be my man,” said Madden, who added that he is voting for Hilton for governor. “The last 20 years in Los Angeles has been screwed.”
“It’s getting worse,” Madden said about the homeless situation in the Los Angeles area. “They cleaned up here and there. Spots, especially along the beach, coastline, you see it cleaned up. Two months later, everybody’s back.”
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Pratt, a registered Republican running as an independent, faces off in a nonpartisan mayoral primary against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a socialist.
Tuesday’s election will determine which two candidates advance to the November general election. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, they will automatically be named the next mayor.
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