WASHINGTON, D.C. — Cole Tomas Allen, 31, was arraigned in Washington, D.C., on Monday on charges of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump. Federal law enforcement officers stopped Allen before he reached Trump and other administration officials during an alleged attempt to storm the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday night.

Allen worked as a high school tutor and had a background in mechanical engineering and computer science. According to a White House official, Allen's sister told the Secret Service and local law enforcement that he was known to make "radical" statements.

An FBI agent's affidavit states that Allen sent an email to family members moments before initiating the attack. The email specifies grievances against Trump administration officials and policies, and referenced immigration detentions under the Trump administration, U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, the bombing of a girls' school in Iran, and the Epstein scandal.

"I'm not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not the fisherman executed without trial," the email states. "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes," the email adds.

Jared Holt, senior researcher at Open Measures, said he had seen no indication that Allen was steeped in conspiratorial thinking. "You look at the social media profiles that have been attributed to this suspect and they're really not that radical," Holt said. "If you were just to randomly bump into one of these people on the street, you might get the sense that something was a little off," he added.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, founding director and chief vision officer at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, said the defendant's writings suggested he felt personally responsible for not having taken action sooner and did not appear intended to incite others or spread a particular ideological message. "I think there's a little bit of nihilism reflected here. This idea that there is no more solution, violence is the answer, nothing else is going to change, nothing else is going to be effective," Miller-Idriss said. "I don't think you usually see the defeatism on the far right, [which is] more of a mobilization of martyrdom, of wanting attention, of wanting to launch a movement, to be a firestarter, that kind of thing," she added.