Cole Tomas Allen, the Torrance man accused of trying to kill Trump on a news show, to remain in prison

Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old Torrance man was charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents' Assn last weekend. dinner, will remain in state prison awaiting trial.

Allen acknowledged his continued arrest during a brief hearing in federal court in Washington, DC, on Thursday. “He still agrees to be arrested at this time,” one of his public defenders, Tezira Abe, told Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, according to CNBC.

He did not enter his plea during the trial, according to the Associated Press.

Another of Allen's public defenders, Eugene Ohm, and Abe argued when they filed for Allen's pretrial release, citing his lack of criminal record, family support and ties to his church, and inconsistencies in what they say are weaknesses in the government's case against him.

Abe and Ohm did not respond to a request for comment after the hearing.

In addition to trying to kill Trump, a terrorism-related charge that carries a possible life sentence, Allen faces two gun charges related to his alleged transport of two guns across state lines while traveling from California to Washington on an Amtrak train, and it is alleged that he discharged one of those guns – a handgun – during the incident.

In arguing for Allen's release in their plea deal Wednesday, his attorneys not only insisted he is not a danger to the public, but questioned the government's reasoning and evidence for the charges against him.

Allen was captured on a hotel video camera running past US Secret Service agents into a secure event area and lying on the floor above a diner armed, according to prosecutors, with a handgun, a shotgun and various knives. He then fell to the ground and was arrested according to prosecutors.

Trump administration officials who were at the dinner, including Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for DC, quickly impeached him – largely based on an email that Allen had sent to the family just as he breached the security of the event, which Trump and others called a “manifesto” but was titled “Apology and Explanation.”

In that document, Allen allegedly wrote that he was referring to Trump's top management, and the highest ranking among them gets priority. It is said that he wrote that he would “go past” others at the event to reach those officials, but he did not mean the guests or the hotel staff and chose a gun instead of slugs to “minimize casualties” in the room.

The charge of attempting to kill the president hangs heavily on that document, according to the charging documents.

Blanche and Pirro also alleged that Allen fired during an encounter with Secret Service agents, where they said the Secret Service agent was shot by a ballistic vest. Prosecutors also alleged in court that Allen fired his gun, noting that they found one case, but did not mention the shooting of a Secret Service officer.

That shooting was the basis for one count of aggravated assault.

In their filing for Allen's release, his attorneys questioned the validity of both arguments.

They wrote that the government's “only evidence provided” of Allen's intent to kill Trump — an “Apology and Explanation” letter — was “absolutely vague” and never mentioned Trump by name.

“The government's evidence for the crime charged — attempting to assassinate the president — is therefore built on speculation, even under a reading of his theory,” Allen's lawyers wrote. “While the government cannot say that the letter reveals the intent to target administration officials, it falls short of limiting those officials to President Trump.”

In regards to one count of firing a gun, Allen's attorneys wrote that the government “has not asserted that Mr. Allen ever fired any of the weapons that were found. They wrote that the government, “after asserting that Mr. Allen shot the Secret Service Officer in a criminal complaint, he simply retracted the theory by not mentioning the officer's allegations at all” when he filed a motion challenging Allen's continued arrest.

In the latest filing, prosecutors wrote only that the officer had seen Allen fire his gun “in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom.” However, they provided little evidence to support that claim, except that the gun had a spent cartridge in its barrel.

“In short,” Allen's attorneys wrote, “the government's entire argument about the nature and circumstances of the case is based on assumptions about Mr. Allen's intent that raise more questions than answers.”

Prosecutors, in a separate filing in the case related to the collection of evidence, rejected the defendant's requests.

“A preliminary analysis of the crime scene is consistent with the government's testimony that your client fired at least one 12-gauge pump action shot at Officer VG, and that Officer VG fired his service weapon five times,” they wrote. “The government is aware that no evidence has been collected and analyzed so far that is inconsistent with the above.”

They wrote that evidence suggests Allen fired his Mossberg 12-gauge pump-action shotgun “at least once while passing the magnetometers on the Terrace Level of the Washington Hilton.”

They wrote that investigators found one spent cartridge in the gun's chamber, and that “the government's preliminary analysis and video analysis indicate that your client fired his gun at” the Secret Service officer identified only as “VG,” and that “at least one clip was found at the crime scene that was consistent with one of the gunshots.”