A preliminary hearing for the suspected gunman is scheduled for May 8.
The bullet that hit a Secret Service agent just outside of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was fired by the gunman and was not friendly fire, according to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Pirro shared on May 3 that there is video of the suspect, Cole Allen, shooting at the Secret Service officer stationed outside the ballroom on April 25.
“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro shared during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.
The Secret Service agent, who is expected to be okay, was wearing a bulletproof vest at the time.
Pirro reiterated that the suspect intended to do mass harm in a “premeditated, violent act, calculated to take down the president and anyone who was in the line of fire.”
“It is definitively his bullet, he hit at that Secret Service agent, he was—had every intention to kill him and anyone who got in his way, on his way to killing the president of the United States.”
Pirro and Tapper were both attending the dinner when the gunman stormed the lobby, sprinting past law enforcement, as he apparently attempted to get inside the black tie event.
Tapper asked whether Pirro intended to recuse herself from the case because she was both a witness and a potential target.
“Absolutely not,” Pirro replied. “I mean, there’s no way. I mean, that would be like telling witnesses that, you know, you can’t testify at the trial because you were there. The truth is that there were 2,500 of us who were there, and my ability to prosecute this case has nothing to do with my being there.”
Pirro confirmed that there will be additional surveillance video released from the incident.
A preliminary hearing for the case is scheduled for May 8, Pirro said on Sunday.
By Jacki Thrapp
