WASHINGTON — The man charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month told the FBI he didn’t expect to survive the attack, a federal prosecutor told a magistrate judge on Monday.
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The disclosure came at a hearing called by federal Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, who pressed the government over how Cole Allen was being treated behind bars. Allen appeared at the hearing in an orange jumpsuit, scanning the room when he entered and occasionally nodding along with the proceedings.
Allen had been placed on suicide precautions in a D.C. jail, but his federal public defenders said he was taken off those conditions. Eugene Ohm, one of the federal public defenders representing him, said Allen had been placed in a padded cell in 24-hour lockdown with constant lighting.
Judge Faruqui noted that this was not the first time the D.C. jail had handled defendants charged in cases of political violence.
“A lot of people seem to have forgotten about Jan. 6 but I have not,” he said, referring to the hundreds of Capitol riot cases handled by D.C. federal courts. “Pardons may erase convictions but they do not erase history.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine told the court that Allen told the FBI that he didn’t expect to survive the incident after his arrest on April 25.
“It’s clear he did not expect to survive it, which gives rise to potential concern for suicide,” Ballantine said.
Federal prosecutors said last week that Allen “would have brought about one of the darkest days in American history” had he succeeded in his plan to target Trump administration officials and anyone who got in his way.
Allen, a 31-year-old teacher and engineer from California, was charged last week with attempting to assassinate the president, which carries a sentence of up to life in prison. Allen conceded to detention ahead of a detention hearing last week, and federal prosecutors released additional video from the scene which shows the man identified as Allen charging through a magnetometer and raising his weapon at an officer, who shot at but did not strike Allen.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said on CNN over the weekend that an officer from the Secret Service had a “pellet that came from the buckshot” from Allen’s shotgun embedded in his bulletproof vest.
Faruqui said that the case against Allen is extremely serious, but noted that the D.C. jail holds many defendants charged in serious cases.
“You house people who have been found guilty of killing people,” the judge said to Tony Towns, the acting general counsel for the D.C. Department of Corrections. “How can those people have less restrictive conditions than he does?”
Faruqui told Allen that it “sounds like some things have not been the way they’re supposed to be” behind bars and said he would make sure he had a Bible and and legal papers.
“If we can get someone vegan food, we can get you a Bible,” Faruqui said.
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