On this “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” broadcast, moderated by Margaret Brennan:
- Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
- CBS News White House correspondent and White House Correspondents Association President Weijia Jiang
- CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd and former deputy director of the Secret Service and now a CBS law enforcement analyst AT Smith
- Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland
- Sir Christian Turner. U.K ambassador to the U.S.
Click here to browse full transcripts from 2026 of “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation. I’m Margaret Brennan.
Washington is waking up to what still feels to those of us who are in attendance or even those watching on live television to be an unreal experience. But it’s an experience that’s becoming more and more common in these times of political turmoil.
Last night, at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, shots rang out as President Trump and his Cabinet, members of Congress and hundreds of journalists attended the annual event honoring the First Amendment, freedom of the press.
Secret Service agents quickly tackled the alleged shooter outside the ballroom following a brief exchange of gunfire. A Secret Service agent was hit during the attack but protected from serious injury by his bulletproof vest.
The president praised the quick actions of law enforcement that prevented the assailant from entering the ballroom, a breach which could have led to a more tragic outcome.
We have got a lot to get to, including an interview with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
But we begin with a report from senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe.
(Begin VT)
(MUSIC)
ED O’KEEFE (voice-over): Attending the dinner for the first time as commander in chief, President Trump took his place at the front of the room.
WEIJIA JIANG: And we’re going to get started now, so enjoy your dinner, and we will be back. Thank you.
ED O’KEEFE: Eleven minutes later, as guests settled into their meals, mentalist Oz Pearlman, the scheduled entertainer, was showing the president and first lady a trick.
Then:
(GUNSHOTS)
ED O’KEEFE: … in the back of the room, plates crashed, as attendees dove to the floor and under tables. Some could smell gunpowder.
In 10 seconds, the Secret Service surrounded and whisked out the first couple. They nearly lifted the vice president out of the room. Surveillance footage shows the suspect, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, California, raced by magnetometers just a staircase above the ballroom.
He was quickly tackled and apprehended. With the suspect detained, guests climbed up from under the tables and picked themselves off the floor. Secret Service began to secure the room and the kitchen and started sweeping out other senior officials, the Treasury secretary, the House speaker, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father and uncle were assassinated.
ERIKA KIRK (Widow of Charlie Kirk): I just want to go home.
ED O’KEEFE: Also in attendance, Erika Kirk, whose husband, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was assassinated last year.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is one of the biggest events of Washington’s social calendar, held at the Washington Hilton, one of the capital’s largest public spaces.
(GUNSHOTS)
ED O’KEEFE: It’s also where President Ronald Reagan was shot in March 1981 after speaking in the very same ballroom.
The president, who’d wanted to continue with the dinner, was held backstage by Secret Service for more than an hour. When he returned to the White House, he and Cabinet secretaries headed to the Briefing Room.
WEIJIA JIANG: In that moment, when you realize there was a threat and Service agents were telling us to get down, can you describe what was going through your mind, how you were feeling in that moment?
DONALD TRUMP (President of the United States): It’s always shocking when something like this happens. It’s happened to me a little bit, and that never changes. The fact, we were sitting right next to each other, the first lady on my right, and I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray.
I thought it was a tray going down. I have heard that many times, and it was a pretty loud noise. And it was from quite far away, hadn’t breached the area at all. They really got him. But so it was quite far away, but it was a gun. And some people really understood that pretty quickly. Other people didn’t.
(End VT)
ED O’KEEFE: When asked about the uptick in political violence last night, President Trump said he tries not to dwell on it, but called his line of work – quote – “a dangerous profession.”
It was the third instance of a gunman in his vicinity in less than two years – Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Ed O’Keefe, still in last night’s tuxedo because you, like so many people on this program and at this network, worked through the night, thank you.
ED O’KEEFE: That’s what we do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Nicole Sganga, our homeland security and justice correspondent, is here with more on the investigation.
Nicole, what do we know?
NICOLE SGANGA: Yes, Margaret, multiple sources tell CBS News that the gunman told law enforcement he was targeting Trump administration officials.
Sources now say that Allen’s brother had also alerted local police of alleged alarming writings that he shared with the family prior to the incident.
(Begin VT)
NICOLE SGANGA (voice-over): CCTV video reveals the moment the 31-year-old suspect sprinted past a security checkpoint, charging toward the ballroom where President Trump, Cabinet officials and roughly 2,500 guests were assembled.
JEANINE PIRRO (U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia): It is clear, based upon what we know so far, that this individual was intent on doing as much harm and as much damage as he could.
NICOLE SGANGA: Cole Allen, a teacher from Southern California, opened fire at a Uniformed Division officer of the U.S. Secret Service, before agents tackled him to the ground, handcuffing him.
MAN #1: He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives. As he ran through that checkpoint, members of law enforcement from the U.S. Secret Service intercepted that individual.
MAN #2: Where’s it coming from?
NICOLE SGANGA: Shouts of “Watch for crossfire” as Secret Service personnel and D.C. police rushed to the scene, agents from inside the ballroom and medics from outside the hotel.
Investigators are now combing through a hotel room at the Washington Hilton. Authorities have also begun searching his California residence.
MAN #3: The public should also rest assured that there will be no stone unturned during this investigation.
NICOLE SGANGA: According to his LinkedIn profile, the suspect worked for a tutoring and test prep company and was awarded teacher of the month back in 2024. He’d finished a master’s in computer science last year. He’s now facing two felony charges, including assault on a federal officer.
(End VT)
NICOLE SGANGA: White House officials tell our CBS News’ Jennifer Jacobs that authorities have found anti-Trump and anti-Christian rhetoric on the suspect’s social media accounts.
We’re also told by law enforcement sources both of his firearms were purchased legally in California. As for the defendant, Margaret, he will appear in federal court tomorrow.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Welcome. Good morning. And I’m glad you are safe, sir.
It was a harrowing night.
TODD BLANCHE (Acting U.S. Attorney General): Good morning. You as well.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It was a harrowing night.
I want to get straight to what we know now in the light of day. The FBI, as I understand it, has gone to a home in Torrance, California, believed to belong to the alleged shooter, most likely into his D.C. hotel room as well. What have they discovered there? What do we know?
ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Yes, that’s right.
So, the FBI worked all night, working with local law enforcement, working with the Secret Service. They’ve executed various search warrants on locations, also on devices that were recovered from the suspect. This investigation is just over 12 hours old, so we still are actively looking at the – everything that happened.
But, as of now, we – we have – we have collected a fair amount of evidence, which we’re now going through.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Any indication at this point that he was part of a group? Was there any foreign nexus to the inspiration for the violence he attempted last night?
ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: We’re still looking into motivation, and that’s something that hopefully we’ll learn over the next couple of days.
We do believe, based upon just a very preliminary start to understanding what happened, that he was targeting members of the administration. We don’t – we don’t have specifics beyond that kind of general statement, from what we’ve learned so far. But we are – we’re actively talking to witnesses that knew him, and talking to other individuals and going through the material that we’ve collected.
So I expect that you will hear more – more about that in the coming days.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You mentioned a statement.
Is the shooter, alleged shooter, sharing details on what he was attempting to do? What makes you say it was a threat to administration officials writ large?
ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Just based on the evidence we’ve collected, not – not a statement from the suspect…
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: … just from – from what we’ve learned in our preliminary investigation.
I – he’s not actively cooperating. I expect that he will be formally charged tomorrow morning in federal court in Washington, D.C., and – and we’ll go from there.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the Secret Service has said that the suspected gunman was staying in the hotel. He walked up to a security checkpoint with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives. How long had he been inside that hotel? And was there a security protocol for – for guests?
ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: That’s – we’re still – we’re still understanding the security protocols that led to him being – being able to have firearms in that hotel.
We do believe he was staying in the hotel in the days leading up to last night. We believe that he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then from Chicago to Washington, D.C.
As far as what happened with him coming down and breaching the perimeter, as you’ve seen from some videos that have already been released, he was apprehended and subdued feet away from breaking the perimeter. So – so, we were all safe inside.
And – and that’s a testament to the Secret Service doing their job and to law enforcement doing exactly what we – we hope and expect them to do in a time – they train for this their entire careers. And many of them never actually see it happen in real time. And it happened last night, and they reacted exactly as they should have.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, the alleged shooter, as we just said, had multiple weapons in his possession.
Here in the District of Columbia, open carry is not permitted. You just said he traveled from California across the country by train. At this point, are you thinking at the federal level of changing security protocols in any way to, for example, match on trains what you are expected to go through when you fly, where you do have to declare a weapon when you cross state lines?
How did he travel by train without any challenge and arrive here in the nation’s capital?
ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Look, this isn’t about, in my mind, changing the law or making the laws more restrictive around possession of firearms.
It appears he purchased these firearms the past couple years. We don’t know how those firearms ended…
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