Shots fired! Politicians and reporters scrambling! Headlines claim an assassination was averted. Whew! Let’s check in now to review this miraculous security work that stopped a killer.
Record scratch.
Have you seen this hotel security video?
A man walked up to a checkpoint at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25th. The president, vice president, and most of the cabinet were one floor below. The man was Cole Tomas Allen, a paying guest at the hotel openly carrying a shotgun around the hotel.
The video shows the checkpoint was dysfunctional. A magnetometer was lying flat on the floor. Two TSA agents were crowded around it. Three officers were leaning on the wall near them, idling. Most of the staff in frame did not react to Allen until he had walked right past them. The screening line was broken down while the man it was supposed to protect was still in need of protection.
The video shows Allen had the shotgun pointed at the ground before, during and after he moved through the checkpoint. POINTED AT THE GROUND. The Washington Post emphasizes no muzzle flash came from his weapon at any point in the footage. The shotgun was recovered with a spent shell still in the chamber and no round racked behind it. That is the condition of a pump-action that has not been fired. SHOTS NOT FIRED.
The video reveals the security response to the threat was delayed, reckless and unprofessional. An officer drew his weapon and fired four rounds in a hallway towards at least five other personnel. The officer does not flinch, stagger, or react like a man who has just taken a round to the vest. Not when Allen comes toward him, or when he passes him. Not before he draws. Not before he fires.
Let’s recap. An open carry environment with a broken-down checkpoint with idling guards not paying attention, a man who walks through with a shotgun pointed at the ground, and a guard who opens fire in the direction of his colleagues.
Now read the deranged spin coming from the White House.
The DOJ affidavit, filed Monday, alleges that when Allen ran through the magnetometer the agents heard a gunshot, Officer V.G. was shot in the chest, and V.G. then fired back. The White House calls this a heroic agent who returned fire after being hit.
Nope. The video contradicts all of this. The White House lied.
The charges include discharging a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer. The discharge count requires Allen to have discharged. The video shows no muzzle flash from his shotgun and the weapon was recovered unfired. Nope one. The assault count requires Allen to have assaulted. The video shows no reaction consistent with a vest hit at any point. Nope two.
0 for 2.
The most dangerous person in that hallway was the one who fired four rounds toward his own colleagues at a checkpoint that was already down and practically open.
But let’s go a level deeper. This is a story about what the current Secret Service does when its dubious perimeter fails. The agencies that exist to provide accountability apparently run for cover. The FBI signed an affidavit the video plainly contradicts. The acting AG announced charges that are false. The Secret Service director told Congress the perimeter is classified, nothing to see, as if an ostrich is the new national bird.
Open carry in hotels, as if a John Wayne-fiction is not supposed to remain fictional, seems to be related to this incident. I see cosplay more than credible threat. A paying guest carried a shotgun openly through the building to a checkpoint that is torn down. At least eight personnel in frame ignore him. One opens fire. That’s not one officer’s mistake. That smells rotten from the top. Someone authorized the screening line down, while people it was protecting were still inside. The big failures were in place before Allen walked into the camera view looking like a suicide candidate.
The four rounds the officer fired toward his fellow officers are hard to watch. An officer who is actually shot in the chest by a shotgun, trying to return aimed fire, does not stand to put rounds across his own colleagues’ line. The shooting pattern on the video indicates the officer was not hit, didn’t intervene into the man’s path, and continued to fire as the man ran past him. The detection failure was bad, the prevention failure even worse. A checkpoint that wasn’t watching produced an officer who fired blindly into his own team. The DOJ affidavit converts both catastrophic failures into a heroism narrative.
If Allen never fired, then a “loud gunshot” in the affidavit is the officer’s first round. The officer fired first. The legal posture of the entire case inverts. I see no assassination attempt, where an agent heroically returned fire. I see an armed man approaching a checkpoint, met with reckless discharge by an officer who fired on his colleagues and then claimed credit for stopping the threat he himself created.
Ayup. You named it. A pump-action shotgun cycles in a fixed sequence. Pull the trigger, the firing pin strikes the primer, the round discharges. Rack the forend rearward, the bolt unlocks, the extractor pulls the spent hull, the ejector throws it clear, the elevator lifts the next shell from the tube magazine, the bolt rides forward, chambering the fresh round and locking into battery. There is no half-state where a fired hull stays in the chamber while a new round sits behind it ready to go.
His spent shell still in the chamber with no round racked behind it means either the shotgun was loaded with a single round, fired, and never cycled, or it was never fired at all and the hull was chambered that way from the start.
The second scenario is mechanically possible but operationally absurd for anyone expecting a defensive tool. You do not walk up with a dead hull seated and a live magazine you cannot reach without first cycling the action. That is suicide. Rushing into armed guards with a deliberately disabled weapon? Opposite of threat. Muzzle direction at the ground. No flash. Chamber state consistent with a weapon that was not cycled.
Reads to me he wanted to be executed by appearing to be something he was not.
Seven officers?
Option one: tackle and disarm. Job well done, nobody knows.
Option two: open fire on each other and end the event.
They picked option two.
The point is that the response itself accomplished what any assassin or even just an operative would have wanted. The president and cabinet evacuated, the dinner cancelled, everyone hiding and running for cover until the building is cleared. A quick tackle preserves the event. Four chaotic friendly-fire rounds terminates it. The officer who fired didn’t stop an attack. He is the guy who performed one, shut the whole event down.