Prosecutors reject Cole Tomas Allen's bid to remove Pirro and Blanche from assassination case

Federal prosecutors filed a sharp response Friday opposing an effort by Cole Tomas Allen, the man charged with attempting to assassinate the president at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, to disqualify U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche from his criminal case. The filing, submitted to U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, called the defense motion "drastic" and argued it falls "far short" of the legal standard required to remove government counsel.

Allen, 31, of Torrence, California, faces four federal charges stemming from the April 25 attack at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Investigators allege he ran through a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun at a Secret Service officer while hundreds of guests, including Pirro and Blanche, attended the dinner inside. One officer was struck in a bullet-resistant vest. Allen was subdued and arrested.

His defense team now wants the very prosecutors running the case thrown off it. The argument: Pirro and Blanche were physically present at the hotel when the attack occurred, and their proximity makes them victims or witnesses with a disqualifying conflict of interest. Prosecutors say that reasoning would disqualify nearly everyone who attended the dinner, and possibly every Amtrak passenger who rode the same train Allen allegedly used to transport his weapons across state lines.

The defense argument: victims can't prosecute

Earlier this month, assistant federal public defenders Eugene Ohm and Tezira Abe filed a motion asking Judge McFadden to bar Pirro and Blanche from direct involvement in the prosecution. Their core claim was that both officials were "purported victims or witnesses" and therefore could not fairly oversee the case against their client.

Ohm framed the question in sweeping terms, as Newsweek reported:

"As this case proceeds closer to trial, the country and the world will continue to wonder, how can the American justice system permit a victim to prosecute a criminal defendant in a case involving them?"

Abe added that "at the very least" there is "the appearance of partiality that necessitates the recusal of U.S. Attorney Pirro and Acting A.G. Blanche." The defense team also suggested that appointing a special prosecutor could be appropriate.

To bolster their case, Allen's lawyers pointed to media coverage of both officials and cited what they described as Pirro's longstanding personal relationship with the president. The defense wrote that Pirro and Trump "have spent Thanksgivings together and have traveled on his jet for weekends in Florida." They argued that prosecutors could attempt to portray administration officials as intended targets of the alleged attack, a framing that, in the defense's view, would deepen the conflict.

Pirro's response: 'Happenstance' is not a conflict

Pirro's Friday filing dismantled the defense argument piece by piece, starting with the legal threshold. Quoting prior case law, she wrote that the "burden of proof to disqualify Government counsel is extraordinarily high" and that removing federal prosecutors is considered "a drastic measure." Courts, she added, could "only rarely, if ever, imagine a scenario in which a district court could properly disqualify an entire United States Attorney's Office."

The filing then took aim at the defense's central premise, that mere presence at the dinner created a disqualifying conflict. Pirro posed a series of pointed questions:

"Are the Amtrak passengers who sat next to the defendant while he surreptitiously transported guns and ammunition across the country victims? What about the other law enforcement officers who were helping to secure the event when the defendant made his failed charge and fired his shotgun?"

She continued:

"Does each and every attendee at the Dinner have a disqualifying conflict of interest? What about their family members? The answer to these questions is 'no.'"

Pirro acknowledged that some individuals present at the dinner may qualify as victims "in a colloquial sense" but concluded that neither she nor Blanche qualifies as a victim or witness "in any legally meaningful way." The defense motion, she argued, relied on "a smattering of press clippings" about Pirro and Blanche rather than any substantive legal basis.

The filing's sharpest line drove the point home: "The fact that happenstance delivered them to the Dinner when the defendant made his assassination attempt does not disqualify them from now prosecuting him."

What Allen is charged with

The legal maneuvering over who gets to prosecute Allen should not obscure what he is accused of doing. Federal charges include trying to assassinate the president, attacking a U.S. officer or employee with a deadly weapon, transporting a firearm and ammunition across state lines to commit a felony, and firing a gun during a violent crime.

Investigators allege Allen was carrying a shotgun, a pistol, six knives, ammunition, and shotgun cartridges at the time of his arrest. He allegedly traveled by Amtrak while concealing the weapons and ammunition, then breached a security checkpoint at one of the highest-profile political events in Washington.

The shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner prompted broader political debate about rhetoric and responsibility. Some lawmakers rushed to blame political rhetoric while sidestepping the shooter's own stated motive, a pattern that has become familiar in Washington.

A familiar defense playbook

Defense attorneys have every right to challenge the composition of a prosecution team. That is how the adversarial system works. But the argument here stretches the concept of "victim" and "conflict of interest" to a point that, if accepted, would produce absurd results.

Pirro's filing made that plain. If attending the same event as a defendant creates a disqualifying conflict, then every Secret Service agent who helped secure the dinner, every journalist inside the ballroom, and every guest who walked through the hotel lobby that night would have standing to challenge the prosecution. The logic collapses under its own weight.

The defense also leaned heavily on media reports, what Pirro's filing called "press clippings", rather than legal authority. That is not a conflict-of-interest argument. It is an attempt to turn public attention into a procedural weapon.

Allen's lawyers further suggested that Pirro's personal relationship with the president should disqualify her. But U.S. Attorneys are political appointees. They serve at the pleasure of the president. The notion that a U.S. Attorney must recuse herself from a case involving an attack on the president because she knows the president would effectively bar any presidentially appointed prosecutor from handling the most serious cases in the country.

What comes next

Judge McFadden, a Trump appointee, has not yet ruled on the disqualification motion. Newsweek reported that it contacted defense attorneys Ohm and Abe for comment via email outside regular working hours; no response was noted.

The case will proceed toward trial with these threshold questions still hanging. If McFadden sides with prosecutors, as the weight of the legal standard strongly suggests he should, the defense will have burned time and attention on a procedural gambit while the charges remain unchanged.

Four federal counts. A shotgun fired at a Secret Service officer. Weapons smuggled across state lines. The man accused of all that wants to argue about who gets to hold him accountable. The court should not let that distraction succeed.