Trump DOJ could have awkward time explaining this part of its Cole Allen prosecution

In their motion seeking Cole Tomas Allen’s pretrial release, his lawyers argued that Allen’s intent to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House correspondents’ dinner last weekend is “far from clear.” Ahead of Thursday’s detention hearing, they wrote that the letter in which Allen allegedly explained his actions “makes no mention of the president by name.”

At the hearing, the defense conceded, for now, that Allen should be detained, so he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

But the point about his not directly mentioning the president raises a broader issue that could surface as the case progresses toward a possible trial. The defense argument is one that the Trump Justice Department can easily rebut, but might have an awkward time doing so, given the president’s understandable discomfort with how Allen apparently referred to him.

In part of his letter explaining “why I did any of this,” Allen allegedly wrote that “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” When explaining his “expected rules of engagement” in the letter, he allegedly wrote that he “would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.” As for the reference to “targets” plural, which would include more than just Trump, Allen’s alleged “expected rules of engagement” also included “Administration officials.”

When asked by a reporter for his reaction to the letter, Trump seemed upset at the reporter for asking and said, in part, “I’m not a rapist” and “I’m not a pedophile.”  

The president has denied any wrongdoing related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while facing child sex trafficking charges and has politically plagued Trump’s second term.

Separately, the president is appealing sexual abuse and defamation awards issued by civil juries in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll. One of the juries found Trump liable for sexual abuse but not rape, though a judge wrote that the civil jury’s “finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

In support of their argument for Allen’s pretrial detention, which they didn’t wind up having to present in court on Thursday — though they still wanted to, even though the defense conceded detention for now — DOJ lawyers assumed that Allen referred to the president in his letter.

For example, they wrote ahead of Thursday’s hearing: “In his own words, he viewed anyone attending the Dinner as a legitimate target because they ‘chose’ to attend the President’s speech.” Though the DOJ didn’t quote Allen’s derogatory description, that’s apparently a reference to the line from his letter that mentioned people who “*chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor.”

To be sure, Allen’s alleged letter is not, as his lawyers argued, the “sole” evidence of his alleged intent to assassinate Trump.

In support of its detention argument, the DOJ wrote ahead of the hearing, among other things, that Allen traveled from California to Washington — specifically to the hotel where the dinner was set to take place — tracked Trump’s movements leading up to the dinner and, “armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol, two knives, four daggers, and enough ammunition to take dozens of lives, was apprehended by USSS [Secret Service] officers mere feet away from the ballroom where his primary target was located, along with other members of the Cabinet.”  

That Trump was Allen’s “primary target” is an argument the DOJ must prove, not merely state as fact. But it has reasonable evidence to back that claim, and further evidence may emerge before a trial, if one takes place. Of course, the government’s case can degrade over time as well. It’s at an early stage. There hasn’t even been an indictment yet, though one may come soon.

In any event, Allen is presumed innocent, and it’s the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt if the case goes to trial. If it gets to that point, the DOJ’s strategy might entail not only the obvious, typical plan of how to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but also how to do so without angering the president, who keeps a close grip and watch on the department.

Though prosecutors would dispute the accuracy of the derogatory description on the president’s behalf — or at least correctly argue that it’s irrelevant whether it’s true for the purposes of this criminal case against Allen— they would first need to explain to the jury why the reference so obviously applied to Trump.

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