The man accused of showing up to the White House Correspondents' Dinner with two guns and knives — planning to kill President Trump and as many cabinet members as possible — just lost his bid to have the top prosecutors thrown off his case, and the insulated class that threw that party still doesn't understand the world they've built.
Cole Allen's lawyers argued that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro were too close to the case — they were at the Washington Hilton that night, they're close to Trump, and they've made public statements. US District Judge Trevor McFadden wasn't buying it. In an 18-page opinion, McFadden wrote that the two "are unlikely to be trial witnesses, nor do they meet the legal definition of victims. Their statements about the investigation and friendships with the President likewise present no basis for screening them from the case," according to the New York Post.
Fair enough on the legal merits. You don't get to shop for prosecutors just because the people coming after you were in the building you allegedly came to shoot up. But step back and look at the picture: the White House Correspondents' Dinner — that annual exercise in media-politician self-congratulation, where reporters who spent four years calling half the country fascists put on tuxedos and clink glasses with the officials they cover — became an actual crime scene on April 25. A 22-year-old walked in armed for a massacre.
The media class has spent years telling ordinary Americans that the real threat is domestic extremism, that dissent is dangerous, that questioning institutions is an attack on democracy itself. Then one of their own galas gets hit, and suddenly it's a different story. The same press that spent 2020 rationalizing arson and looting as "mostly peaceful" now wants you to know they're the victims.
Meanwhile, Blanche is juggling this case alongside a manhunt in Kansas City, where a different 22-year-old — Oscar Sanchez-Munoz — allegedly opened fire on vehicles near Arrowhead Stadium during World Cup events, killing one person and injuring others. Fox News reported Blanche told "Fox & Friends" that authorities believe Sanchez-Munoz may be dead, though Kansas City police said they had not confirmed that. The FBI had offered a $25,000 reward. Blanche's quote was blunt: "He's out there allegedly just shooting multiple different places and you have somebody dead — and so hopefully, we got him."
Two armed suspects. Two very different crime scenes. One — a highway near a stadium where ordinary Americans were going about their lives. The other — a black-tie Washington affair where the people who shape the narratives that govern those lives were toasting each other. Guess which one dominated the headlines.
Allen will face his day in court. The prosecutors stay. That's the right call. But the class that threw that party should take a hard look at the country their policies have built — because the chaos isn't just coming for the people in tuxedos. It's been hitting everyone else for years.
