A nearly decade-old local television interview of White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen has surfaced, but with a twist. This comes after the 31-year-old California man opened fire at Washington Hilton on Saturday night, prompting emergency evacuation. President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, VP JD Vance and other officials were rushed. The shooter was identified after Trump posted a photo of him being arrested on Truth Social.
Cole Tomas Allen’s old clip
The clip, originally aired by ABC7 Los Angeles (KABC) in 2017, shows Allen as a young California Institute of Technology student presenting an invention at the “Aging into the Future” conference, a tech-focused event centered on improving life for senior citizens.
Read More: Cole Tomas Allen: WH shooting suspect’s ‘manifesto’ found; family gives shocking details to police
In the segment, Allen showcased a prototype wheelchair emergency brake designed to improve safety for older adults and people with mobility challenges.
“The wheelchair brakes tend to lock the wheels, but don’t lock the chair to the ground. But with this device, that will prevent the chair from skidding at all,” he said in the interview.
Usha Vance in the clip?
Meanwhile, several social media users pointed out that they could see an Usha Vance-like woman in the video. However, that is not the case. Grok issued a fact-check.
“The woman in the video is not Usha Vance. In February 2017, Vance was clerking for the Supreme Court in D.C., not presenting at this L.A. tech conference,” the bot wrote.
Donald Trump reacts to manifesto
Meanwhile, Trump said on Sunday that Allen had an anti-Christian manifesto and “a lot of hatred in his heart” but was stopped well short of the hotel ballroom hosting the event.
Trump told Fox News that the suspect was “a sick guy” and that his family previously expressed concerns about him to law enforcement officials. “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians,” Trump said on Fox News’ “Sunday Briefing” program.
The manifesto was sent to Allen’s family members shortly before the attack, a law enforcement official told Reuters. In it, the suspect called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin,” the official said.
Read More: Cole Tomas Allen used twisted nicknames in WHCD shooting manifesto – What Ma Deuce, ‘coldForce’ mean
“Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes,” the manifesto read, according to the official.
Targets listed in the manifesto included administration officials — although not FBI Director Kash Patel — prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest, the official said.
The manifesto mocked the “insane” lack of security at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was held, the official added.
“Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance,” the manifesto’s author reportedly wrote. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
🚨 BREAKING: Watch the full clip here ➤
