DOJ Investigating Alleged Leftist Ties to White House Correspondents’ Dinner Suspect

The Department of Justice is investigating allegations of ties between left-wing groups and Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old California teacher charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

When asked by The Daily Signal if the department is investigating Allen’s reported association with leftist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “Yes, of course.”

The Justice Department held a press conference Monday shortly after the suspected shooter was charged with attempting to assassinate the president of the United States.

Reports said Allen was associated with a progressive collective known as “The Wide Awakes,” but the organization denied the connection in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Hudson Crozier.

Posts from the Wide Awakes Instagram account include a call to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a declaration of American land as “Indian Land.”

Shortly before the Justice Department press conference, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the attempted violence.

“Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler to score political points, are fueling this kind of violence,” she told reporters. “The left-wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed, and it almost did so again this weekend.”

Leavitt said Allen’s manifesto echoed the rhetoric about the president on social media and in the press.

“Much of the manifesto of the would-be assassin is indistinguishable from the words that we hear daily from so many,” she said.

The California man also faces charges of transporting a firearm across state lines and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. He appeared in federal court in Washington for his arraignment on Monday.

Allen left a manifesto with family members referring to himself as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and expressing plans to target senior Trump administration officials who were present in the hotel ballroom.