The suspect in the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting “definitively” fired the bullet that hit a Secret Service agent’s vest during the incident, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said.
“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 said. “It is definitively his bullet.”
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Pirro’s comments on CNN’s State of the Union come as reports speculated the Secret Service agent was hit by friendly fire. Multiple outlets reported that court documents in the case do not unequivocally say the suspect, Cole Allen, was the one who hit the agent, fueling the public’s speculation. But U.S. officials have all maintained it was Allen who fired the shot.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran said on Thursday that the agent who was hit fired five rounds from his gun and that each missed Allen while he was falling to the ground. Pirro also told CNN that “there’s video of the defendant shooting at the Secret Service agent” and that the Secret Service agent “will tell you himself that he was shot at and then he returned the fire.”
President Donald Trump also told reporters on Thursday that “it wasn’t us” who shot the agent, and the president has repeatedly thanked law enforcement at the event for their response to the attack.
“He hit at that Secret Service agent,” Pirro said of Allen. “He had every intention to kill him, and anyone who got in his way, on his way to killing the president of the United States. This was a premeditated violent act calculated to take down the president and anyone who was in the line of fire.”
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No one was killed in the shooting in the security area outside the dinner on April 25. Law enforcement apprehended the suspect and arrested him before he was able to enter the dinner. Allen appeared to hit his knee on a security magnetometer, causing him to fall to the ground as security rushed to apprehend him.
“It was a very dangerous situation, and but for law enforcement and their quick reaction, this thing could have been much worse,” Pirro said.
