Court Filing Reveals Suspect’s Scattered Thoughts Before Trump Assassination Attempt at WHCA Dinner

New court documents from prosecutors in the case against Cole Allen, the 31-year-old charged with trying to assassinate President Donald Trump, offer insight into his mindset ahead of last weekend’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, D.C. Read more on charges.

Allen bought a one-way Amtrak ticket and boarded a train from Los Angeles to D.C. on April 21, with a single stop in Chicago for a connection, according to filings. Details on his travel. During the cross-country trip, he jotted down observations and thoughts in a running note on his phone.

Strikingly, these entries—and a subsequent manifesto—reveal no direct ties to his alleged plot. Instead, they depict a man with “scattered” and unfocused thoughts, per a former FBI behavioral analyst, despite the high-stakes circumstances.on.

While he traveled through the U.S. southwest on the first leg of his trip, Allen made a note: “[t]he southwest desert in spring Distant wind turbines looming like snowy mountains across the hazy NM desert.”

Of Chicago, where he would switch trains and board a second train to his final destination, Allen wrote that, “Chicago is cool; kinda like an Iowa small town was scaled up to LA size.” Of the sliver of southwestern Pennsylvania through which he would pass, he wrote that the “woods are awesome (look like vast fairy lands filled with tiny trickling creeks in spring apparently.”

Allen arrived in Washington, D.C. early in the afternoon on Friday, April 24. He spent about 30 hours in the city before initiating his alleged attack.

Surveillance video from the Washington Hilton hotel, also released by the Department of Justice, showed Allen apparently pacing through hallways, once entering the hotel’s fitness center and taking a look around before hastily exiting.

And then even him trying to manage other people’s perception of him, like the people that rode on the train with him and helped him with his luggage, they weren’t affected by this at all,” said Grusing. “But yet he feels like he’s impacting all of society by doing what he’s doing, which again, that’s what makes me think, when he makes these little statements and apologies to everyone, he’s saying, ‘I’m going to become a national name by doing this. Look at me.'”

“So he’s putting himself as this martyr, as this patriot, as the only one who can really fix this thing that’s broken, and that’s very dangerous.”

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