The pellet lodged in a Secret Service officer’s ballistic vest came from Cole Tomas Allen’s shotgun. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro made the announcement Sunday, ending more than a week of forensic ambiguity around the April 25 shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot, from the defendant’s Mossberg pump action shotgun, was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” She added: “It is definitively his bullet.”

The confirmation resolves a question that had lingered since Allen, a 31-year-old from Torrance, California, allegedly sprinted through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol. One officer was struck in the chest. Five rounds were discharged by law enforcement. Allen was injured but not shot.

A forensic gap, now closed

Investigators had previously stopped short of attributing the wound to Allen’s weapon. A CNN analysis of hotel footage and ballroom audio could not “definitively conclude when or whether Allen fired a shot.” The criminal complaint charged Allen with discharging a firearm during a crime of violence but did not allege he shot the agent. Blanche had said ballistics work was ongoing.

Prosecutors can now link the defendant’s weapon directly to the officer’s injury — strengthening both the attempted assassination charge and the firearms counts. Pirro said additional surveillance video would be released.

Weeks of planning

Court documents describe a methodical operation. Allen reserved a room at the Washington Hilton on April 6 — nineteen days before the dinner. He traveled cross-country by train, arriving April 24 and checking into the hotel where the event would be held the following evening.

Surveillance footage released Sunday shows Allen entering a room near the checkpoint to remove a long coat concealing the shotgun. A bomb-detection K-9 and its handler had looked inside the same doorway moments earlier, but the dog was trained for explosives, not ammunition. “These dogs are deployed mission-specific,” former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow told CNN. “The mission here was to find high-order explosives or explosive devices that could hurt the general public or the president, not to find ammunition.”

Phone records show Allen tracking the president’s movements that evening, searching for whether Trump had arrived at the ballroom and when dinner would be served. An email sent minutes before the attack, signed “Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen,” does not name Trump — but Pirro said the behavioral evidence is unambiguous. “This is clearly — the president is a target […] it is not just the manifesto, it is his actions,” she said.

Political violence, again

Federal officials have framed the attack as part of a broader pattern. “Violence has no place in civic life,” Blanche said at a press conference. “It cannot and will not be used to disrupt democratic institutions or intimidate those who serve them, and it certainly cannot continue to be used against the president of the United States.”

The correspondents’ dinner, an annual ritual celebrating the relationship between press and government, is the latest American civic institution disrupted by political violence. The event, the first Trump had attended as president, was cancelled.

What comes next

A preliminary grand jury hearing is scheduled for Friday, and Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that additional charges are likely. “There’s initial charges and there’s an investigation, and to the extent that the government learns more things, I assure you they will, they will become charges,” he said.

Pirro dismissed the possibility she would recuse herself despite having attended the dinner as a member of the Trump administration. “Absolutely not,” she said. “My ability to prosecute this case has nothing to do with my being there.”

She also pushed back on the prospect of an insanity defense, describing Allen as “far from insane — he is brilliant.” Allen, who holds a mechanical engineering degree from Caltech and a master’s in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, has no criminal record. His attorney, Tezira Abe, noted that he is “presumed innocent at this time.”

Allen faces up to life in prison if convicted of the assassination count alone.

Sources