FBI Director Kash Patel was grilled on Fox News over whether authorities knew anything about the suspected shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C.
Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones was at Saturday’s dinner and said it was a “security nightmare” in a post on X after the event.
Patel, who wasn’t escorted from the hotel ballroom for approximately 90 minutes after President Donald Trump and his cabinet were hurried out by security, was pressed by Jones Monday on Fox & Friends about whether the alleged gunman was “on the Feds’ radar.”
The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, is due to be arraigned in federal court Monday.
“Was he on the Feds’ radar before?” Jones asked Patel. “Did you see the posting he was making? That he was trying to come to the hotel? And it is true that there was an alert put out with a description of him, but he wasn’t detected in the hotel?”
Allen is accused of sending a manifesto filled with anti-Trump and anti-Christian sentiments to family members before the shooting took place, officials told CBS News.
“Those are all things that the bureau and our investigation are looking at,” Patel said, before pivoting to talking about how the Behavioral Analysis Unit team operates.
The FBI chief added that so far, his team has collected “e-mails, social media postings, witness interviews, interviews with family and friends and neighbors” to present in court.
“So is any of that true, what he mentioned?” co-host Brian Kilmeade interjected, referring to Jones’s previous question.
“Because Kash, you are talking about the behavior analysis element of it, I’m not talking about that. I’m saying was there a profile put out? Was he known?” Jones followed up. “Was there chatter about him before, not during the act, before it?”
Patel said those questions would be answered in the criminal complaint and explained that he couldn’t “get ahead” of the Department of Justice.
Jones also laid into Patel over the repeated assassination attempts on Trump, with Saturday’s incident being the third in less than two years.
“The president of the United States is averaging an assassination attempt once a year… So who’s going to do the investigating of the procedures?” Jones asked. “Secret Service can’t investigate themselves because there are still people in leadership at the Secret Service that were responsible for Butler. How does that happen? It was a failure.”
Patel agreed that the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting of Trump was “a total failure” and said he had “full confidence” in Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whose department oversees the Secret Service.
In his first interview since the shooting, Trump called Allen’s alleged manifesto “anti-Christian” when speaking to Fox News.
Sections from the suspect’s writings were later published by the New York Post, detailing that Allen referred to himself with the monikers, the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and “Cole coldForce.”
“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial,” Allen allegedly wrote.
“I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
The suspect allegedly said that he was targeting a range of top officials in the Trump administration.
Authorities were alerted to the manifesto by the suspect’s brother who lives in New London, Connecticut, according to the Post.
