I'm MJ Franklin and this week on the book review podcast Sweatsy by Emma Klein hands down the novel with the most impressive control I've read this year someone is alluding their mind and They're approaching their death completely moving elegantly written lost in the pros of it Which sometimes feels like poetry to me. What is the life add up to what is it all mean listen to the book review wherever you get your Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for being here on Saturday night As you all know an act of violence occurred at a gathering that symbolizes something fundamental to our system From the New York Times. I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the daily today the Department of Justice filed three federal charges in United States District Court against Cole Thomas Allen On Monday the man accused of storming the White House correspondents dinner with multiple weapons was charged in federal court in Washington DC Violence has no place in civic life It cannot and will not be used to disrupt democratic institutions or intimidate those who serve them and it certainly cannot continue to be used
Against the president of the United States today Devlin Barrett explains what we're learning about the suspect his plan to target the president and whether this entire event should ultimately be thought of as a security failure or success It's Tuesday April 28th Devlin Barrett welcome back to the daily. Thanks for having me So we've been getting some clarity on who the shooter was who attempted to storm the White House correspondents dinner on Saturday And details have been emerging since this happened, but Devlin you covered the Justice Department for the times tell us we learned on Monday So on Monday there were a few key developments first the suspect Cole Allen was formally charged in a criminal complaint He was charged with attempting to assassinate the president that wasn't the only charge But it's the most important charge by far because that charge carries a potential life sentence The other two charges in the criminal complaint are transportation of a firearm over interstate commerce
and that's a reference to him allegedly bringing weapons across country and Discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence that charge basically means that he fired the weapon while committing a crime And one thing that officials have emphasized since this happened is that the first round of charges aren't going to be their last word on this There may be more charges added as they understand the evidence better and as they have a better grasp on what exactly they think happened Let's talk for a moment about the suspect at this point. What have we learned about his background? So once this happened obviously we've been trying to figure out as much as we can about his background about his life He's 31 he's from Torrance, California, and he's by all accounts a smart guy He has a master's in computer science He went to Caltech which is not an easy school to get into we know that he you know was raised in the Protestant Church and his father was a church elder and In talking to people who know him and talk to some of his former students because he worked as a tutor for a good bit of time They all describe him as nice cheerful a bit of a nerd
And all of them that have been interviewed by reporters expressed shock and surprise that the person they knew as this tutor and academic Would do anything like this? We also know that he left behind a kind of apology note an explanation note to his friends and family like many people I read the letter that he wrote and it is apologizing for what he's done It's sort of a good by letter to people that he loves it is imagining at times a Q&A Where he imagines criticism and then he imagines what he would say in response to the criticism about his actions Do we have any information about what radicalizes man that made him go from being angry and aggrieved to actually picking up weapons Traveling across the country and attempting to assassinate the president not yet You know the FBI is combing through his online presence interviewing his family and friends so far the online presence the online postings Suggest that he was a liberal minded person who had liberal political views and was very unhappy and upset and angry about things the Trump administration Was doing that seems to be a driving factor for him
But in terms of how did he get to that point? That's something that the FBI is still unpacking Can you just explain Devlin? Why is that piece of writing relevant to the charges that we saw today? Well, it's super relevant to what prosecutors will have to ultimately prove in court Which is the mindset of someone and the aims and goals of someone who was tackled and you know taken down You know very early in his attempted attack for prosecutors helps explain what his actual target was what his targets were That's why this note to his family is so important because he makes pretty clear without ever really saying Trump's name in the writing that Trump is the one he is most angry at Trump is the one he is hoping to get to because presumably they would not have been able to charge him with Attempting to assassinate the president if they did not know what his motivation was because he did not actually get close enough to the president to attempt any kind of Assassination do I have that right right you mentioned earlier that the suspect was from California I'm sure by now a lot of people are aware that he traveled from California to try to carry out the shooting in DC What do we know about what and how he planned?
so we know that he bought the two weapons involved a pump action shotgun and 38 caliber pistol in recent years he bought those in California and he traveled with them when he came to Washington That doesn't mean that he's been planning to do this from the moment He bought those weapons it just means that he bought the weapons several years ago, right and in early March the president announces that he will Go to this dinner. It's called the White House Correspondents Association dinner It is a big production in the nation's capital They do it every year around this time and this president hasn't typically gone to it So in some sense it was a bigger deal this year because Trump had decided to go Prosecutors say in the beginning of April the suspect starts making his travel plans to go to Washington And so in late April he gets on a train from Los Angeles and that goes to Chicago once he gets to Chicago He buys a ticket to Washington DC. He arrives in Washington DC on Friday and checks into the hotel the Washington Hilton That's the same hotel where this big Gallaud dinner is going to be held right
Then on Saturday night the night of the event the dinner Gallaud proper begins at around eight o'clock Around 8 30 there's a security camera footage that shows the suspect Racing just sprinting all out through the first security checkpoint and you can sort of see the shotgun in his hand You can't really see the handgun or the knives that agents say they later took off of him But he races through that checkpoint and out of the frame of the video Well, enforcement officials say that the part you can't see that happens right after that is that one of those agents turns and fires Five shots at the suspect and none of those shots actually hit him But he does fall to the ground and is quickly tackled and disarmed Well, unfortunately officials also say that the same agent who fired also gets struck by a round in his protective vest The vest protects him and he's not badly injured But that agent does take a bullet in the vest some of what unfolds next is actually quite similar to other security scares people here
They think are gunshots. They're not sure what's happening. They're not sure where the danger is But they're told to get down essentially like just get down, you know lower than your table So if there is a gunman he can't see you and that's what a lot of people in the ballroom are doing in that moment And you know, it's basically 90 120 seconds of real terror because no one really knows what the danger is or what direction it's coming from But at the same time you've got secret service agents outside the ballroom Dealing with the suspect on the floor above and you've got secret service agents on the floor of the ballroom Essentially doing their best to seal off and make sure no one goes in or out of the ballroom in that moment to keep the people inside the room safe And you've got the president security detail and the vice president security detail moving them as quickly as they can off The day is to get them out of harm's way, right?
So once it's clear that no one has been killed in this incident no one has been seriously injured in this incident It becomes more of a question of okay. How does this keep happening? This is at least a third time someone has tried to kill President Trump in one form or another And so it raises a whole bunch of questions about the security of the event and you know preparation for the event We'll be right back law transforms agreement into reality a word becomes an agreement an agreement becomes a contract a contract becomes law today Harvey the platform for legal work is writing the next chapter more than 200,000 lawyers are building with Harvey accelerating review sharpening negotiations and more This is how the future of agreements is being crafted now Harvey learn more at Harvey dot AI
Harvey does not provide legal advice users should always independently review and verify any output from Harvey Hi, this is Carolyn Ryan managing editor of the New York Times at the times We started to help everyone stay informed and at this critical moment We're making all of our election coverage free in our app This election has been expansive battleground map states that hadn't been in play before are suddenly competitive We have more than a hundred reporters out there talking to voters. I wonder if I can just call will to get the actual numbers Hey, how are you how many voter interviews? Do you think we've done? Okay, you're awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you. Don't you love the New York Times?
I'm on election night. We are the place to go for race results. Our maps are updated minute by minute Our data team can show you what votes have come in what votes are yet to be counted and how that might affect the overall results Come experience all of our election coverage for free right now in the New York Times app Devlin before the break you mentioned that a lot of questions have emerged about the security around this event and I have seen a bunch of different reports Essentially criticizing what happened as a security failure just the fact that an armed gunman could get as far as he did He said in his letter how unimpressed he was with security at the hotel. What do you make of all of that criticism? I mean look some of it is a very natural human reaction right to the horror and surprise that someone did this at all That part I think is perfectly understandable and it's always worth asking questions, you know I cover law enforcement that's sort of what I do every day I think here though, there's a big difference between for example the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024 and What happened here because I think there was a clear security failure in butler where you had a rooftop with a sightline?
Toward the candidate that was not protected that was not guarded. I think most security experts would tell you that's an obvious thing that needs to be guarded Right here the situation I think is quite different in that this person tried to essentially bum rush a fancy black tie gala He made it a matter of steps past the initial security screening But he never even got onto the floor where the event was happening He was taken down and tackled before he could even get to the stairs that led to that floor So in talking to former Secret Service and talking to other security experts a lot of folks have said to me look if the question is What do you do to prevent this? This is what the perimeter is for the perimeter is designed to deal with this issue before you're close to the event itself And that's what happened here I do think that you're going to see though a number of conversations and debates about well Maybe this hotel is not the best place to hold these events anymore because you do have a functioning hotel Right on top of a large ballroom a lot of the questions and concerns I've seen raised about what happened on Saturday really sort of sent around the idea that the hotel itself wasn't safe
That's certainly what the suspect was pointing out in what he wrote Well, exactly and that's what he seemed to really focus on in this letter He sent to family and friends he seemed to think the security was terrible and the security didn't really police the lobby didn't really police the guests He has a sort of simplistic understanding of all the security measures around him and doesn't quite grasp that the security He observes Friday night and Saturday morning is not the same security that is in place by Saturday night And I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand all of the multi-layered things that go into securing an event like that and Strangely enough the gunman was one of the people who didn't understand all the layers that go into that Can you tell us a little bit about what goes into securing an event like this?
Like you had mentioned earlier that the security worked essentially the way that it was supposed to I'm curious kind of what you mean by that So the thing to keep in mind is the goal of the security for this event was not to secure the entire hotel And I think that's where some of the disagreements come which is like well Maybe should it be should for example the security perimeter be pushed out essentially outside the building itself So that you've already gone past magnetometers for example before you get into the building at all But that's not how this hotel is designed and that's not how this ballroom space is designed I spoke to security experts who said look if you push the perimeter out further and further That's not necessarily an improvement because the actual thing you're trying to protect is not the hotel actual thing You're trying to protect is the gathering of all of these senior government officials to put another way It's not secret services job to protect the lobby of hotel. Absolutely I will say there is one I think important security question here that hasn't really been answered and might change our understanding of the security of for this event and that is Did law enforcement whether you're talking about secret service or fbi or california police
Did law enforcement agents before all this happened have any understanding that this person might be a threat to the president And we don't really I think have a clear answer to that yet But if the answer is yes, then why weren't trip wires telling investigators that this person was coming? But that's a big if right we don't know the answer that yet And do you think devilin that we will get clarity about that? Do you have any indication somebody is like working on getting the public an answer is there an investigation into what other law enforcement agencies may have known? Right. It's an obvious question. We're certainly trying to get that answer ourselves
I'm sure others are as well I'm sure congress is trying to get that answer and to be clear sometimes it takes a while for the law enforcement agencies to do a full scrub Of all of their files and make sure of what they were told in the past about a particular person It's not something as simple as just punching name into the government agency equivalent of google and just spitting out a name and maybe a file or two It takes a bit of effort and time to make sure that there isn't anything anywhere in the system I don't think I can recall a president Presidential candidate just to be really precise about our language here Who has had this many attempts on their life in such a short amount of time? We have seen in addition to this attacks on politicians in Minneapolis and Israeli embassy staffers in DC Just to name a couple examples of why I think it feels to a lot of people like we're living in this age of heightened political violence And devilin just given what you cover your experience. I just wonder if this is how you also see it and what you make of this So it's a great question One thing is definitely increased and that is the number of threats just floating around the internet The number of threats that go after not just politicians
But for example judges and schools and hospitals and all manner of american public life Have a much larger increase in just threats being thrown around that is definitely increased. There's data that show that's increased I think that is a problem for law enforcement because all of the agencies that are designed to protect all these people whether it's local cops Federal marshals FBI agents secret service agents They are having to dig through more information. There's sort of a sea of hostility out there online a sea of angry threatening Language that makes it harder and more time-consuming to figure out who is really dangerous and who is just sort of a keyboard commando So that's one challenge and to the question of is there more political violence in america I think it depends on how you measure if your measurement is Assassination attempts against a sitting president or a presidential candidate I think you have to say the last few years would argue the answer is yes If the question is political violence in all its forms I think that becomes a much harder question to answer because there has always been a degree of political violence in this country
It's not like there's some golden age prior to this of no political violence in this country And I think part of the answer lies in what types of political violence do you count? I actually have that exact question because as you're speaking I'm wondering whether you would count somebody who goes into a school having written a thousand words about a political grievance and commits a Mass act of violence would that be considered political violence even if the targets are not themselves politicians for example or elected officials? Right. I mean most of the time when we talk about political violence we talk about violence that is motivated by politics And so in that scenario the victim isn't you know a political victim But the act is carried out in the name of a political issue I think most people would consider that to be political violence So if you look at political violence in terms of the motivation And if you look at political violence in terms of who is affected by it A lot of the people in that ballroom on saturday night did not grow up with school lockdown trails Some of them did but a lot of them didn't I think younger americans frankly have a little more experience than older americans With that type of incident that type of fear and it may be that part of what happened on saturday
Is more and more of that type of danger more and more of that type of panic response Is finding its way not just into our schools or hospitals or other public places But into even the most high-profile powerful gatherings of american government officials How does law enforcement deal with all of that and are we in an age where it is worth contemplating? Whether the president of the united states can actually be safe in a public event like this So as part of this larger debate about how to keep the president safe how to keep senior officials safe The president and his senior advisers are all arguing that this incident only shows how badly they need to finish construction of the white house ballroom This is a larger fight that you know has been going on for months About whether this is really necessary or proper and whether the president can do it on his own without congressional approval A judge has said no, but that legal fight is still going on and what you've seen since saturday's event is both the president and his senior aides arguing very Forcefully that this is exactly the kind of thing that the ballroom would prevent from happening or make more difficult to happen
But I think the challenge for law enforcement really two things one You have to keep certainly the president safe and senior government officials safe events like saturday show you how difficult that can be And that it may be becoming more difficult to keep them safe But I also think part of the challenge here for law enforcement is Making the public feel like the president is safe making the public feel the senior government officials are safe And if a guy with a shotgun can just sort of storm a security checkpoint and cause a great deal of panic and fear In that sense, it may be becoming harder and harder for law enforcement to prevent that kind of incident And I think one of the challenges here for the government and for the public is What are you willing to do or not do to be as secure as possible?
Where do you draw the line between public life and government having events? You know, this was a very secure event in many many ways But I think a lot of the people walked out of that ballroom feeling more afraid and more endangered than they'd ever felt in their lives Devin Barrett, thank you so much. Thanks for happening. We'll be right back 33 presidents I called the president at 4 30 in the morning and he answered seven decades in space We want to see what's beyond the next star 60 super Sundays. They were probably the best team in the league every single year 53,500 puzzles I use a different starting word every day 25,000 recipes and I love a one-can recipe because I don't love washing cans The New York Times celebrating 175 years of helping you understand the world subscribe now for a special offer at nytimes.com slash subscribe
Here's what else you need to know today President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump demanded that ABC pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel from its airways over a bit that he did about the president and the first lady That was delivered days before the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents Center First Lady Melania is here in the bit Kimmel who is a long history of sparring with the president had imagined himself as the emcee at the dinner Look at well so beautiful. Mrs. Trump you have a glow like an expectant widow The comments come months after ABC temporarily pulled Kimmel's late night show after a conservative uproar Over the way that he described the politics of the man accused of shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk And President Trump has told advisers he has not satisfied with Iran's latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and in the war The proposal also called on the United States to end its naval blockade But would have set aside questions about what to do with Iran's nuclear program Iran has repeatedly rejected American proposals to suspend its nuclear program and hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium Today's episode was produced by Dan and win mary Wilson with help from mood shady
Was edited by Devin Taylor lizzo baelyn and michael ben wah Contains music by soviet lanneman and dan powell. Our theme music is by wonderly this episode was engineered by chris wood That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow