Alleged White House gala gunman was a Kamala supporter, game developer, radical Wide Awakes member

The gunman arrested at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner has been identified by authorities as a Donald Trump-hating and Kamala Harris-supporting video game developer who was a member of a far-left activist movement and his college’s Nerf Club.

Cole Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from California, attempted to sprint through security at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night in what authorities believe was a bid to murder Trump administration officials.

Allen’s own words — in a purported manifesto and in deleted social media accounts — show that he was far-left, virulently anti-Trump, and had a conspiratorial mindset, and participated in far-left movements like "No Kings" and "The Wide Awakes."

Federal Elections Commission filings from October 2024 show that Allen donated $25 earmarked for the Kamala Harris for President campaign sent via the ActBlue online fundraising site. He also sent a tweet from his since-deleted X account in early November 2024 saying he had recently voted for Harris and urging others to do so too.

Authorities said Allen was wielding a 38-caliber semi-automatic pistol and 12-gauge shotgun when he was stopped by the Secret Service after rushing through the magnetometers and attempting to make his way to the ballroom where the crowd of hundreds of government officials and journalists was having dinner.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that Allen had traveled from California to Chicago to the nation’s capital in order to carry out the attack, and that he is not currently cooperating with investigators. Blanche said Allen’s goal was to target members of the Trump administration.

Jeffery W. Carroll, the interim Metropolitan Police chief, said Saturday that Allen had actually been a guest at the hotel where the event was held.

“He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives as he ran into that checkpoint,” Carroll said.

The police chief added that “at this point it does appear he is a lone actor — a lone gunman.”

The “Friendly Federal Assassin” anti-Trump manifesto

The would-be assassin — who signed his manifesto “Cole ‘ColdForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen” — showed in his more than 1,000-word screed that he hated Trump and had adopted some extreme conspiratorial views about the president.

A number of outlets including the New York Post published the manifesto penned by Allen and found by investigators.

“I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me," Allen wrote of his motive for undertaking the attempted shooting. “And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. (Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)”

Allen said that he had created “rules of engagement” for himself, making it clear that he had intended on killing Trump officials, saying his targets were “administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”

“Secret Service: they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who *aren’t*),” the gunman also wrote.

Allen claimed that “in order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls).”

The gunman also made it clear that he was willing to murder journalists and other attendees of the event in order to kill Trump or members of his team, writing that “I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Allen also critiqued the security he had seen at the hotel.

“The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before,” the shooter wrote. “Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again. Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed shit. Actually insane.”

Allen believes in Epstein conspiracies and false claims about Trump and Putin

It was reported by the Free Beacon that Allen had a since-deleted account on the leftwing Bluesky social media site where he went by “Cold Force” — with the letter “o’s” each replaced with a brown-colored eye emoji.

One post that he reportedly reposted said that "the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system.”

Allen also reportedly shared posts calling to "Abolish ICE," comparing a federal immigration detention center as a "concentration camp," claiming billionaire Elon Musk was "a Nazi" and “Hitlerian,” and protesting Operation Epic Fury against Iran.

“We put a known traitor in office. Who explicitly ran on revenge. Who fu---dup covid response. With known connections [to the] murderous fu--er in the Kremlin,” Allen reportedly tweeted in September. “I’m mostly surprised by this administration’s incompetence in fascism; I was expecting actual fighting to have started much sooner.”

Just this month, the gunman also baselessly claimed of Trump that “from the Epstein files that have been released, it’s public knowledge that he likely IS basically a sociopathic mob boss.” He also called Trump a “villain” and suggested someone should “beat his ass.”

He also called Vice President JD Vance a “piece of shit” and a “moron.”

Allen also falsely claimed that the war with Iran was about telling young Americans to “go die in the Middle East to distract from a pedophile’s incessant crimes.”

Gunman tied to “No Kings” and “Wide Awake” far-left movements

A number of outlets — including CBS News, ABC News, and Fox News — all reported that the White House had said family members told investigators that Allen had attended a “No Kings” protest in the past and that he was part of a far-left group known as “The Wide Awakes.”

The anti-Trump “No Kings” movement has hundreds of leftwing partners nationwide. 

“The Wide Awakes” far-left movement uses a brown-colored eye emoji as a typical symbol of their group — the same emoji that Allen used in his since-defunct Bluesky profile name.

The Instagram account for The Wide Awakes shows that the group is stridently pro-Black Lives Matter, pro-abortion, pro-transgender activism, and anti-ICE.

“The Wide Awakes are an open-source network who radically reimagine the future through creative collaboration,” the group’s website says. “We are a community of voices that welcome the ideas and membership of ALL as we grow this movement to create a new culture together in pursuit of liberation of mind, body, and spirit.”

The far-left group said: “We are infinite, disruptive, visionary, accountable. We want the radical complexity of diversity. We believe creative liberation is a game and all of us can play now and forever. We can emancipate ourselves without violence. We don’t need to be told what to believe or how to engage, we just need to be inspired to question what’s there. Broadening perspective yields a safer world.”

“We reclaim our inherent right for joy, for autonomy, and liberty. We reject extraction and finite games and embrace regeneration, abundance, and infinity in their stead. We stand, virtually and in reality, awakened internally, spiritually, psychologically, and eternally,” The Wide Awakes say.

The so-called “toolkit” for the group proclaims that the group is “inspired by the Wide Awakes of 1860, a group of young abolitionists who banded together and devised a radical plan to support abolitionist efforts. Wide Awakes emerge again where justice, democracy, and welfare for all people are threatened.”

There are a number of articles from 2020 promoted on the Wide Awakes website.

“A Civil War Political Movement Reawakens — Complete With Capes. In 1860, the Wide Awakes mobilized against slavery and for Abraham Lincoln. A new collective is tapping into their spirit today,” a New York Times headline from September 2020 said.

The outlet Dazed had a headline that month which claimed that “Wide Awakes were formed, or at least reformed, at the beginning of 2020, when the year’s biggest cultural marker seemed like it might be the U.S. presidential election.”

Vogue wrote of the group in October 2020 that “The Wide Awakes Are the Civil War–Era Activist Group Making a Comeback in Bold and Joyful Style” while a Vulture headline that month said, “Joy As Resistance. Artist collective the Wide Awakes takes NYC this weekend. Why we’re marching.”

“How the Wide Awakes are bringing joy to 2020 with lessons from the 1800s. Inspired by a group of revolutionaries in Abraham Lincoln's time, the revived Wide Awakes movement considers joy a political act,” the “TODAY Show” said when touting an October 2020 segment on the group.

Shooter’s longtime gamer background

Allen’s own LinkedIn page described himself as a “Game Dev, Engineer, Scientist, Teacher” and a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.”

The YouTube page for Allen — using the ColdForce3000 username — was largely obsessed with the Super Smash Brothers video game, and featured a “Mii Brawler” playable character.

“Specializing in jank, stupid flashy plays, jank, anime references, and more jank,” Allen’s YouTube page description said. 

The Twitch video game page for “ColdForce3000” similarly featured the Mii Brawler, and “ColdForce3000” also posted on the Warframe video game forum.

Allen also wrote that he has been a self-employed “Indie Game Developer” since September 2018.

The gunman's LinkedIn said that he “designed and built the C++-based video game Bohrdom™” and released it on the Steam gaming website. He described the game as “a combination of a racing game with a bullet hell as experienced by self-propelled pinballs.”

Allen also claimed that, since 2014, he has been working on a video game called “First Law, previously called Endgame, previously called Artifact, a top-down shooter/RPG based around realistic 2-D physics-based space combat.”

Would-be Trump assassin interned at NASA, now working as part-time tutor

Allen attended CalTech as an undergraduate years ago, and recently received a masters in computer science from California State University Dominguez Hills. He said on LinkedIn that he had been a member of the “Caltech Nerf Club.”

A post on Facebook by CalTech in June 2017 touted Allen as a mechanical engineering major from Torrance and included a photo of him as a young child juxtaposed with a picture of him as an adult. While at CalTech, Allen appears to have been involved in a robot competition and a rocket design competition, among other things.

Allen’s LinkedIn touted “an article on the robotics competition my team won.” The March 2016 story had the headline of “Caltech competition shows robot soccer is much more violent than the human version.”

His LinkedIn said that he had also previously been a mechanical engineer at IJK Controls, a teaching assistant at Caltech, a mechanical engineering intern at Fluid Synchrony, and an undergraduate research fellowship student at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The website Rocket Reach also said Allen had previously been a software developer at Su-Kam Intelligent Education Systems.

The May 2025 commencement announcement by California State University Dominguez Hills listed Allen receiving a master of science in computer science.

Allen is currently listed as a part-time teacher at C2 Education since March 2020. The company says that “at C2, we believe in our students and in their potential for greatness.”

“Congratulations to Cole Allen from C2 Education of Torrance on being honored as our December Teacher of the Month!” the company where Allen teaches posted on Facebook and Instagram in December 2024. “#TeacheroftheMonth #C2Education #StudentSuccess #InspiringEducators #AcademicExcellence #EducationMatters #DedicatedTeachers.”

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Saturday night that Allen was being charged with two criminal counts, the use of a firearm during a crime of violence, and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.

The gunman is expected to be arraigned Monday in federal court.