White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect Cole Allen wants two top prosecutors booted from his case since they were at the political soirée where he allegedly tried to kill President Trump.
Lawyers for Allen — who is accused of crashing the April 25 event armed with two guns and knives — says the fact that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro were both at the WHCD means they have a conflict prosecuting the case.
The dinner, which had President Trump, wife Melania and Trump’s top cabinet members in attendance, was forced to be evacuated after Allen tried to enter a security checkpoint a floor above.
Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, Calif., opened fire and struck a Secret Service member, who was saved by their bullet proof vest. The agent returned fire but did not hit Allen.
Blanche and Pirro “both heard gunshots, which presumably forced them to duck below the tables with the rest of the occupants,” the filing says. “They were quickly evacuated.”
“Both were potential victims and targets in what they have described as an attempted ‘mass shooting,” the court papers claim.
Pirro even posted to her X account about the harrowing incident roughly 30 utes after the melee, saying: “I’ve been taken out of the ballroom after the sounds of shots fired.”
Blanche and Pirro’s involvement in Allen’s case presents “grave concerns about whether they are making prosecutorial decisions as representatives of the government or as witnesses,” the docs claim.
And on top of the fact that Pirro was present, she is also an alleged 30-year friend and loyalist of Trump — who she says was Allen’s intended target of the shooting.
Even if a judge doesn’t find the two prosecutors don’t have a conflict they would still need to be disqualified from the case because of the “appearance of such a conflict,” the papers say.
Allen was indicted on Tuesday and has yet to be arraigned.
He was in court on Monday during a hearing about the extremely restrictive conditions he was allegedly unnecessarily being subjected to in jail.
Magristrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui apologized to Allen for the fact he was on what amounted to 24-hour lockdown on suicide watch despite his lawyers saying he didn’t pose a risk to himself.
Pirro blasted Faruqui’s comments on X, saying the judge thought Allen deserved “preferential treatment.”
Allen’s lawyers claimed Pirro’s “emotional response was inflammatory, inappropriate, and inaccurate” showing “the depths of her personal interest in this case.”
Pirro said in a statement Friday: “We will evaluate the motion and respond in court.
“We will not tolerate people who come to the District of Columbia to engage in antidemocratic acts of political violence; and we will prosecute all such acts to the fullest extent of the law.”