Secret Service agent ‘definitely’ shot by suspected gunman at White House Correspondents’ Dinner, US attorney says

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Sunday that the Secret Service agent who was shot at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend was hit by a shotgun blast from the suspect charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump.

“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.”

Pirro’s DC US attorney’s office filed several charges against Cole Tomas Allen following the attack.

“It is definitely his bullet,” she added.

A CNN analysis of hotel surveillance video released by Pirro’s office last week, coupled with audio taken from inside the ballroom during the shooting, does not definitively conclude when or whether Allen fired a shot. But the audio analysis does indicate that six shots total were fired during the incident, which aligns with initial statements by law enforcement that Allen fired one shot, while a responding officer fired five more.

Pirro said that additional surveillance video of the incident “will be released.” She also offered new details on where Allen went in the moments before he charged past law enforcement officers at the security checkpoint.

In the video, a law enforcement K-9 and its handler looked inside a doorway that Allen entered. The dog briefly enters the doorway, though it remains unclear what exactly was seen.

“He goes into that room to take off a long coat that he has on,” Pirro told Tapper, reiterating, “He’s wearing a long, dark coat because he has to hide the Mossberg pump action shotgun.”

Pirro said that the K-9 is a “bomb detection dog.”

Jonathan Wackrow, a former US Secret Service agent and CNN contributor, said the dog would have been trained to sniff for “high-order explosives” but was likely not trained to be able to pick up on the scent of the powder in a shotgun shell.

“These dogs are deployed mission-specific. 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,” he said.

While Allen faces an initial charge of discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, his charges could expand or change as a grand jury investigation progresses toward a potential indictment.

“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,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

There will be a preliminary hearing with the grand jury on Friday, Pirro said.

Though an alleged manifesto written by Allen does not name Trump as a target, Pirro said her office has enough evidence to establish him as the “very clear” target.

“We have a lot of evidence that indicates his intent and the fact that everything that he did thereafter … following what the president was doing, where he was going to the day of the event at the hotel, asking on his phone, ‘Is the president in the ballroom yet? Has the president sat down yet? What time will dinner be served?’” she said.

She continued: “This is clearly — the president is a target. And make no mistake, it is not just the manifesto, it is his actions.”

Pirro downplayed any argument of insanity, saying that Allen is “far from insane — he is brilliant. … This is a guy who had no psychotic break.”

She also dismissed the idea that she would recuse herself from the case since she was a potential target of Allen’s as a member of the Trump administration.

“Absolutely not. … My ability to prosecute this case has nothing to do with my being there,” she said.

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CNN’s Katelyn Polantz, Michael Williams, Thomas Bordeaux and Aileen Graef contributed to this report.