Cole Allen wrote that dinner guests deserved to die because attending a Trump speech made them 'complicit'

The Manifesto Justified Killing Civilians: They "Chose to Attend"

Cole Allen's "rules of engagement" classified hotel guests, journalists, and dinner attendees as non-targets. Then he wrote a clause that overrode that classification.

The Loophole

"I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit). I really hope it doesn't come to that."

The logic structure: presence at the event = endorsement of the event's headline = complicity in the speaker's "crimes" = forfeit of non-target status.

What That Means

Counterterrorism analysts call this "expanded justification" — the rhetorical move by which a target list grows from named officials to anyone present. It is a specific feature of mass-casualty intent. Allen included it as a contingency, hedged with "I really hope it doesn't come to that," but the contingency was written into the document.

Who Was in the Room

The Washington Hilton ballroom on April 25, 2026 contained reporters, network anchors, sitting members of Congress, cabinet officials, and a sitting president. The room's population was the largest concentration of media-government overlap in any given year. Allen had thought through what would happen if any of them got in his way.