Video shows moment shooter tried to storm White House dinner, officials say – The Guardian

Footage posted on social media by federal prosecutors includes captions claiming Cole Tomas Allen shot first
Federal prosecutors released footage Thursday of the moment officials say Cole Tomas Allen tried to storm last week’s White House Correspondents’ Association’s dinner in an alleged attempt to kill Donald Trump.
Amid questions about whether or not Allen fired his weapon before being subdued, Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, released edited security camera footage of the incident in a social media post.
In a caption, Pirro claimed the video showed Allen casing the hotel location the night before Saturday’s dinner, and then shooting a Secret Service agent as he rushed through a metal detector at a checkpoint while officers were in the process of removing at least one of the two magnetometers used for screening guests.
Pirro also claimed in the caption there was no evidence that the agent, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, was hit by friendly fire.
The video, which is slowed down and annotated at certain points, has already been provided to the US district court where Allen was charged, according to Pirro. It includes no audio.
While the video does show four muzzle flashes from an agent’s gun as he fired at Allen, it was not immediately clear whether it showed Allen discharging his weapon after he pointed it at the agent.
The video was posted shortly after US Secret Service director Sean Curran told Pirro’s former employer Fox News that Allen was stopped not by Secret Service gunfire, but by a box used to transport a metal detector, which he tripped over as he ran through a checkpoint outside the venue.
Curran confirmed that Allen was not hit by any of the five shots fired at him by a Secret Service agent.
“It appears that the suspect hit his knee, while being engaged by the officer, on one of our magnetometer boxes, and began to fall to the ground,” Curran said.
Curran also reiterated the government’s claim that Allen fired first, hitting the agent who returned fire, but that contention has been challenged by the public defenders acting on Allen’s behalf and by a Washington Post video analysis of security-camera footage, which documented the firing of just four shots, all by the Secret Service agent.
In a letter to the federal prosecutors who brought charges against Allen, the public defenders noted that the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, suggested the government was still working to produce ballistic evidence that the Secret Service agent, identified by the initials VG, had been shot by Allen.
Allen was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate the US president, transportation of firearms to commit a felony and unlawful discharge of a firearm during violence. Allen, a tutor from Torrance, California, has yet to enter a plea in the case.
Earlier Thursday, he agreed to remain in federal custody while his case moves forward.

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