DOJ charges suspect in White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. We are recording this at 2.27 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, April 27, 26. Today on the show, what more do we know about the man who charged the security |
| 0:23.3 | perimeter at the White House Correspondence dinner on Saturday night and opened fire? The Secret |
| 0:28.3 | Service tackled him, but during the chaotic few minutes that followed, President Trump, |
| 0:32.5 | the First Lady, and several cabinet members were rushed out of the building. The Justice |
| 0:36.6 | Department has identified |
| 0:37.7 | the gunman as 31-year-old Cole Allen from California. And Ryan, Alan was in court today. |
| 0:44.8 | What is he being charged with? That's right. I actually just left the courtroom where he made |
| 0:49.7 | his initial appearance. He walked in. He was wearing blue prison garb, sat down at the defense table with |
| 0:55.5 | two public defenders who have been appointed by the court to defend him. Now, the magistrate judge |
| 1:00.0 | read out the counts against him. He said there are three total. One of them is attempt to |
| 1:05.1 | assassinate the president that carries a potential maximum sentence of life in prison. |
| 1:10.6 | Second count is transportation of a |
| 1:13.0 | firearm and ammunition and interstate commerce for a felony. That's up to 10 years in prison. That's |
| 1:18.2 | the potential sentence there if he's convicted. And then the third count was discharging a firearm |
| 1:22.5 | during a crime of violence. So as of now, just to kind of summarize, he's been charged by |
| 1:27.4 | criminal complaint, |
| 1:28.5 | faces three counts. Those are the three counts against him. He is being held for now. He will |
| 1:33.8 | remain in custody, and a detention hearing is scheduled for Thursday. It's important to say that |
| 1:39.3 | the complaint as of this moment is still sealed. So I have not seen it. The judge ordered it to be |
| 1:46.4 | unsealed, but sometimes it takes a little bit of time. So what we know, not having seen that |
| 1:50.5 | charging document yet, is largely based off what Justice Department officials have said, |
| 1:54.9 | primarily acting attorney general Todd Blanche. He said, Alan traveled from Los Angeles to Chicago by train and then from Chicago to |
... |
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