He sent a letter to his family before opening fire at the White House dinner/ Here's what the perpetrator of the attack wrote

2026-04-26 22:45:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

He sent a letter to his family before opening fire at the White House dinner/

The gunman who opened fire at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Cole Thomas Allen, sent a handwritten letter to his family members 10 minutes before the event, calling himself a "friendly federal assassin" and revealing that he was trying to kill government officials.

"Turning the other page is when you yourself are oppressed. I am not the person who was raped in a detention center. I am not the fisherman who was executed without trial," Allen wrote in the letter, which a US official said was handed over to police by a relative.

"I am not a child killed in a school bombing, nor a child dying of hunger, nor a teenage girl abused by the many criminals of this government. Turning the other cheek when another is oppressed is not Christian behavior, it is complicity in the crimes of the oppressor," it said, among other things.

According to international media, Allen described his targets as government officials, with the exception of FBI Director Kash Patel, while stating that he will try to minimize casualties.

" To minimize casualties, I will also use bullets instead of a single shot (less penetration through walls). However, I would go through most of those here to achieve the objectives if absolutely necessary (on the grounds that most of them chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist and traitor and are therefore complicit), but I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that," he wrote.

Allen also mocked the lack of security at the hotel where the Correspondents' dinner was held, saying that Iranian agents could have brought even more destructive weapons and no one would have noticed.

"The first thing I noticed as soon as I entered the hotel was the sense of arrogance. I entered with multiple weapons and not a single person there considered me a threat. Security at this event is completely open, focused on the protesters and those arriving at that moment, because apparently no one thought about what would happen if someone had registered the day before. This level of incompetence is excessive and I sincerely hope it will be corrected by the time this country has truly capable leadership again ," he wrote.

Cole Tomas Allen, of Los Angeles, is a Caltech graduate, part-time teacher and video game developer. New Federal Election Commission records show he made a $25 donation to Kamala Harris' campaign in October 2024. Authorities said Allen was taken into custody after he ran through a security checkpoint and managed to elude police officers at the entrance to the venue.

The gunman was not injured in the shooting but was taken to a hospital for tests. Police said he was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and several knives. If convicted, Cole Tomas Allen faces up to 20 years in prison for the assault, while the illegal weapons charges carry a minimum sentence of 10 years, with the possibility of life in prison if used. /CNA