Man armed with shotgun ran toward Capitol, apprehended by police
The US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — An 18-year-old man was apprehended after running toward the U.S. Capitol with a loaded shotgun, according to Capitol police.
Just after noon on Tuesday, the man parked a white Mercedes SUV, got out of the car and started running toward the Washington, D.C. building, Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan said at a news conference.
As he approached the building, officers with the Capitol police saw him and ordered him to drop the weapon, the chief said.
“He immediately complied,” Sullivan said, noting that the man put down the gun, got on the ground and was then taken into custody.
The man had additional rounds with him, as well as a tactical vest and tactical gloves, according to Sullivan. A Kevlar helmet and gas mask were found in his car, he added.
“Who knows what could’ve happened” if the officers were not standing guard, Sullivan said.
Officers cleared the area, which has since reopened, according to police.
“There does not appear to be any other suspects or ongoing threat,” authorities said.
Both chambers of Congress are out of session this week.
A motive is not clear, Sullivan noted.
The man, who does not live in the area, was not known to Capitol police, he said.
The xc released an image on April 29, 2026, it said was of suspect Cole Allen taking a selfie of himself in his hotel room before allegedly trying to breach security at the event while armed with multiple weapons. (Department of Justice)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal magistrate judge expressed deep concern Monday with the post-arrest treatment of the California man charged for allegedly attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at last month’s White House correspondents’ dinner and whether he has faced overly restrictive conditions that were “extremely disturbing.”
Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui convened a hearing on Monday after attorneys for Cole Allen, 31, requested over the weekend that he be removed from suicide watch at the Washington, D.C., jail facility.
Even though Allen’s attorneys later moved to withdraw that request after they were informed he was taken off suicide watch, Faruqui ordered the hearing, citing “grave concerns” about the treatment Allen has faced.
The judge said some of Cole’s restrictions entailed being placed into a padded cell, with no access to phone calls, books or recreational time. Faruqui also raised the issue of sleep deprivation, noting that Cole had “constant lighting.”
In a heated line of questioning with a representative from D.C.’s Department of Corrections, Faruqui probed why it seemed that Allen had faced much harsher treatment since his arrest than many of those charged with participating in violence during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol who were granted transfers to D.C.’s less-restrictive Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF).
“People seem to have forgotten about Jan. 6 — I have not,” Faruqui said. “Pardons may erase convictions, but they do not erase history. I had many, you know, there was — easily right — dozens, if not more, of people that had firearms that day… People got closer to killing the president that day, they were hanging gallows outside of the front of the Capitol building.”
“I’m just trying to understand, why is there this great difference between Mr. Allen’s situation and what happened there, where they were given the benefit of the treatment going over to CTF,” Faruqui said. “If we were able to house all the January 6 defendants at CTF, why Mr. Allen doesn’t have that same benefit as someone without a criminal history?”
Faruqui claimed Allen was being treated “differently than anyone I’ve ever observed” including accused terrorists, gang members and others facing charges of political violence.
At one point during the hearing, Faruqui apologized to Allen for the conditions he has faced.
“We are obligated to make sure that you’re treated with the basic decency that human beings should have, let alone a presumed innocent person,” Faruqui said. “So I’m sorry. It sounds like things have not been the way that they’re supposed to.”
In trying to give some clarity over the initial move to put Allen under suicide watch, assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine noted to Faruqui that after his arrest Allen did tell FBI agents that he did not expect to survive the attempted assassination. She further noted that in his email he sent to family and others just before carrying out the attack, he mentioned not likely being able to speak to them again.
“I think coming into this, Mr. Allen traveled across country, a great distance over several days to commit this attack and it was clear at the time he committed the attack did not expect to survive it,” Ballantine said. “Which I think certainly initially gives rise to serious concerns about the potential for suicide.”
An attorney for the D.C. Dept of Corrections, Tony Towns, said at the hearing that decisions regarding Allen’s confinement conditions were intended to address safety concerns, and not intended to punish him.
Faruqui instructed Allen’s defense attorneys to keep him updated on the progress of his conditions, though Faruqui also acknowledged he had little in the way of power to compel D.C. Corrections to ease restrictions on his confinement.
U.S. President Donald Trump departs the White House on January 27, 2026, in Washington, DC. President Trump is en route to Clive, Iowa for a rally with supporters where he is expected to talk about energy and the economy in his speech. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — In the hours after FBI agents seized 2020 election ballots from an elections facility in Georgia on Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted a series of thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election — and the 2016 election too.
Fulton County officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility, but said they would provide no further information.
Late Wednesday night, the president reposted to his social media platform a claim that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post reads. “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”
That was just one of a flurry of posts and reposts by Trump making discredited claims about the 2020 election, directly tying the allegations to the FBI’s seizure of ballots on Wednesday.
“This is only the beginning,” Trump said, reposting other posts about the FBI’s action in Georgia. “Prosecutions are coming.”
The development comes after Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.
Among the statements posted and reposted by Trump following the FBI’s actions in Georgia is one on the 2016 election that falsely claims that “Barack Hussein Obama” falsified intelligence and “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”
In addition to being baseless, the claim ignores the fact that Obama was president in 2016, so if he tried to overthrow the government, he would have been overthrowing himself.
The conspiracy theory about Italian military satellites is not new. In 2021, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows directed both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense to look into the matter.
As documented in my 2021 book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” the conspiracy theory was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases including “The Heiress” and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates. She passed her material off to a national security council official at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington.
The Italian spy satellite theory was just one of many unsubstantiated allegations made about the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. At a Trump campaign press conference in November 2020, lawyer Sydney Powell infamously claimed that voting machines had been rigged using software that was “created at the direction of Hugo Chavez.” This was an especially extravagant claim because Chavez, the former leader of Venezuela, had died three years earlier.
In 2023, Powell pleaded guilty to state charges of conspiracy to commit “intentional interference with performance of election duties” in Georgia and agreed to serve six years of probation and to pay a $6,000 fine.
And now it appears that Sidney Powell is back. In a post on X Thursday morning, DOJ official Ed Martin posted a picture of himself with Powell, writing, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”
(WASHINGTON) — Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect in the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on four counts — three of which he had already been charged by criminal complaint.
Those initial charges he was indicted on are attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. The fourth new charge is assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, according to the indictment.
The California native was tackled by law enforcement after the gunfire April 25 inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists, as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet, were gathered for the annual dinner.
Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
Allen — who officials say traveled by train from California to D.C. — allegedly left a note which said that administration officials were his targets and were “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” according to the criminal complaint against him.
The suspect allegedly wrote that Secret Service agents were targets “only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible,” the complaint said.
Allen has not yet entered a plea.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
