US President Donald Trump says suspect wrote an anti-Christian declaration and is a ‘sick guy’.
United States authorities believe a gunman who is accused of trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was targeting President Donald Trump and members of his administration, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says.
Blanche said on Sunday that authorities believe the suspect travelled from California to Washington, DC, by train via Chicago.
Shots were fired on Saturday evening near the ballroom where the dinner was being held as Secret Service agents subdued the gunman, and as Trump, top government officials and hundreds of journalists attended the event.
Investigators have not publicly named the suspect, but multiple US media outlets have identified him as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California.
US media outlets reported that Allen sent a note of roughly 1,000 words to family members shortly before the attack, in which he castigated Trump as a “traitor” without mentioning him by name.
Trump told Fox News that the family of the suspect raised concerns about him to local police before the event. The president also told the TV channel that the accused man had written an anti-Christian declaration. “The guy is a sick guy,” he told Fox News. “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians.”
Law enforcement officials who made initial examinations of the suspect’s electronic devices and his writings believe he intended to target Trump administration members in attendance at the dinner. “It does appear that he did, in fact, set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” Blanche told the NBC TV network.
The suspect is believed to have bought the two firearms he carried with him on Saturday night in the past couple of years, the attorney general said. He is not being cooperative with law enforcement and is expected to face multiple charges on Monday, Blanche said.
Source: aljazeera.com/news
