Was The Correspondents Dinner Shooting A Hoax?

Sources

Read the SPLC Indictment: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1437146/dl

Barrett, Devlin. “Justice Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes.” U.S. The New York Times, April 21, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/us/politics/southern-poverty-law-center-doj-investigation.html.

Calitri, Lydia. “What We Know about Cole Allen, Suspected White House Correspondents’ Dinner Shooter.” National. NPR, April 26, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/26/g-s1-118826/cole-allen-suspected-white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooter-profile.

“Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The White House, September 25, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/.

Fausset, Richard. “How the Southern Poverty Law Center Drew the Ire of Conservatives.” U.S. The New York Times, April 22, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/us/southern-poverty-law-center-doj.html.

Feuer, Alan. “F.B.I. Knew Civil Rights Group Informants Helped Bring Down Extremists, Lawyers Say.” U.S. The New York Times, April 28, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/us/fbi-southern-poverty-law-center-informants.html.

Jimison, Robert. “A 60-Day Deadline Could Pressure Trump on Ending the Iran War.” U.S. The New York Times, April 22, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/us/politics/war-powers-act-explanation.html.

Lah, Kristen Holmes, Casey Tolan, Alayna Treene, John Miller, Holmes Lybrand, Kyung. “White House Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting Suspect Worked as California Teacher.” CNN, April 26, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/26/us/white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooter-teacher-invs.

Londoño, Ernesto. “F.B.I. Searches Businesses Around Minneapolis as Part of Fraud Inquiry.” U.S. The New York Times, April 28, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/us/fbi-minneapolis-fraud-investigation.html.

Olmstead, Molly. “There’s Zero Proof the Correspondents’ Dinner Attack Was Fake. But There Sure Are Plenty of People Claiming It Was.” Politics. Slate, April 26, 2026. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/white-house-correspondents-dinner-attack-cole-allen.html.

Popli, Nik. “Scoop: Democrats Discuss Suing Trump Over ‘Illegal’ Iran War.” Politics. Time, April 28, 2026. https://time.com/article/2026/04/28/exclusive-democrats-explore-suing-trump-if-congress-doesn-t-authorize-iran-war/.

Radzius, Darius. “Iran War Heads Toward Legal Showdown as May 1 Deadline Nears.” Military.Com, April 28, 2026. https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/04/28/Iran-War-Heads-Toward-Legal-Showdown-as-May-1-Deadline-Nears.

Transcript

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Hi it’s Tuesday, April 28, 2026, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend, Leeja Miller. On Saturday night, a gunman entered the Washington Hilton hotel, attempting to access the White House Correspondents Dinner happening on the floor below. Shots were fired, one secret service member was hit, the man was apprehended, and he has now been charged with firearms charges as well as attempting to assassinate the president, charges that could land him life in prison. Literally within minutes of the shooting, the internet was abuzz with chatter that the entire thing was staged, with numerous content creators pointing to photos, a quip Karoline Leavitt made beforehand that shots would be fired, and the regimes immediate attempt to use the shooting to convince the public about the necessity of a ballroom as definitive proof that the entire thing was staged. As Molly Olmstead for Slate writes, quote “we’ve ventured into a post-truth era, where anything that happens will be immediately engulfed in conspiracy theories.”

Meanwhile, as the shooting dominates the 24-hour news cycle, the Trump regime is continuing its dirty work, most concerningly sending in FBI investigators here in Minneapolis where I live this morning as it continues to target us for its crackdown on blue cities, and initiating a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a lawsuit that marks the beginning of the next phase of the regime’s crackdown on important institutions in this country tasked with protecting our civil and constitutional rights. And, separately, May 1st, this Friday, marks the deadline by which Trump must gain approval from Congress in order to continue his war of choice in Iran, and it’s incredibly unclear whether Congress will do anything at all to exert its rightful, constitutionally given power. But no yeah let’s keep talking about the failed assassination and that fucking ballroom.

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Okay let me start by saying it is absolutely reasonable to question everything coming out of this administration right now, okay? Like most conspiracy theories, the idea that the correspondents dinner shooting was a hoax is underpinned by a grain of truth–that this entire fucking regime is a dog and pony show and they love to lie and they have fucked everything up so data that the government produces is no longer reliable and literally everything is so clogged with AI, it’s being shoved down our throats against our will, that at this point it is NOT irrational or crazy or unfounded to question everything coming out of the regime. Let me acknowledge that. Because one thing the right wing nuts are really good at doing is seeing these conspiracies and the grains of truth they represent, acknowledging them, and then exploiting the people who believe in them for their own personal gain, and the left does a lousy job of acknowledging the truth behind the conspiracy theory much to our detriment. Yes, you should question everything this administration tells you. HOWEVER.

You should also question content creators making sensational content on your instagram feed or wherever your preferred source of conspiracy theories happens to be. There are almost always multiple explanations for the things people are pointing out in the photos that came out of the correspondents dinner or any conspiracy theory situation, and usually the more banal option is probably correct. Did that one photo show Trump looking like he already knew this was going to happen, or was it captured in a moment when his 80 year old senile brain was still processing what was happening. What Karoline Leavitt, an unhinged yet shrewd PRESS SECRETARY who’s good enough at her job that she’s managed to hold onto it despite multiple failed press secretaries during Trump’s first term, was she hinting that they’d come up with an elaborate gunman hoax when she said “shots will be fired” or was she using an incredibly common euphemism about the kinds of jokes that were likely to happen at the White House Correspondents dinner? Was Pete Hegseth smiling behind the scenes because he knew this was going to happen or because he’s an adrenaline junkie warmonger who probably gets off on this shit or, at the very least, for some other reason altogether that we don’t know about because we weren’t there. It is very easy to look at things, hear one person seemingly “connect the dots” and say by god it was all a stunt. But if you stop for a moment and look at each ‘dot’ individually and how people, strangers on the internet, are connecting the dots, and think hmm is there an alternative explanation for this? It’s not too hard to unwind the conspiracy theory and at the very least question whether this really does all fit neatly together into the hoax theory or whether it was a real gunman who really did try to do this and no one knew it was going to happen, that there was a lot of chaos in the moment, that peoples’ faces make a lot of different expressions depending on how they respond under pressure and that a single freeze frame doesn’t provide definitive proof of state of mind or previous knowledge. It wouldn’t hold up in court. I think, personally, and I’m willing to be proven wrong, that this wasn’t staged but that the Trump regime is very quick and very skilled at seeing any event like this as an opportunity to be exploited in order to further their agenda.

These people are really really skilled at PR, because they have no conscience. Every single event is fair game for being utilized to further their agenda, no matter how much they have to twist things like logic and reason in order to make it work for them. And I think we saw this in real time over the weekend. The fact that the president immediately held a press conference to say “this is why we need a secure ballroom” isn’t a sign that they had this all planned from the beginning, it’s a sign that we have a president who is extremely used to holding spur of the moment press conferences so he can talk off the cuff about shit and that the PR apparatus of the White House and the regime is really really adept at spin. Because they’ve had a lot of practice, because this is not their first rodeo, this is not the first time something has happened that they’ve taken and run with to try to justify whatever part of their agenda was top of mind at the moment. Nevermind the fact that it defies reason that a highly secure ballroom attached to the White House that will only hold under 1000 people would ever be used by the White House Correspondents Association for their annual dinner, one which the president isn’t obligated to attend and one which the White House Correspondents Association is vehemently determined to make at least appear as independent as possible. That journalistic independence from the President sure wouldn’t be as convincing if they decided to hold the dinner in his literal house. Not to mention the Washington Hilton ballroom holds over twice as many people as Trump’s proposed ballroom would. None of it makes sense. A staged attempt on Trump’s life as a roundabout way to justify this ballroom doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is that Trump has pissed enough people off and turned up the temperature enough in this country that there are people who are interested in ending his life, one of them attempted to do so at this very public event, and his team is just twisted enough to, within minutes, say hey if this had happened in the White House secure ballroom none of this would have happened, yeah go with that. Let’s not think it through further.

And you can watch this kind of attempt to spin the shooting in Trump’s favor happening in real time over the weekend. First it was the ballroom. Then it was Trump claiming that actually it’s just a sign that he’s a really important, highly consequential president, because no president would elicit so many attempts on his life if he wasn’t highly consequential. Right because everyone remembers the highly consequential administration of President James A Garfield.

The alleged shooter, Cole Thomas Allen, an impossible to remember name because it is just three first names, has been charged with weapons-related offenses and attempting to assassinate the president, which could lead to life imprisonment if found guilty, and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro has promised that there will be additional charges as the investigation unfolds. Much like the alleged arsonist in the Kimberly Clark warehouse fire I talked about last week, I suspect we’re going to hear the Terrorism term thrown around eventually in this case. The Trump regime has promised to charge anyone espousing quote unquote “antifa” views with domestic terrorism. As I’ve explained before, domestic terrorism isn’t an actual crime, there’s no criminal statute for domestic terrorism, you can only be charged with aiding a terrorist OR you get charged with the underlying crime, in this case attempting to assassinate the president, and then you get a sentencing enhancement if prosecutors successfully convince the judge that the perpetrator had terroristic intent. It means longer prison time and being labeled a terrorist for life, which has wide ranging implications. Probably not for this guy, I mean being labeled an attempted presidential assassin for life already comes with a lifetime of consequences, even if he doesn’t end up serving life in prison, but for an arsonist, for example, the Trump regime is likely going to attempt to elevate illegal activities to full blown terrorism solely on the basis of the perpetrators alleged political beliefs. So any time we see something like this, any crime committed on the basis of left-leaning ideology, my ears perk up and I have my eyes peeled for terrorism allegations. Trump himself has already called Cole Tomas Allen’s so-called manifesto, the message he sent to friends and family right before storming the dinner, Trump has described it as “anti-Christian.” Language that mirrors the language in NSPM-7, the presidential memo ordering various Trump officials to investigate and prosecute people for so-called antifa ideology which, I’ll remind you, the memo says quote “Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” That gives wide breadth for Trump officials to go after all sorts of people who espouse leftist ideas, which the alleged shooter in this case did.

That same memo, NSPM-7, also explicitly tells Trump’s IRS commissioner to investigate non-profits with tax-exempt status for their support of antifa ideology. But Trump’s DOJ said hold my beer, literally in Kash Patel’s case, I’ll show you one better, and came out with this Southern Poverty Law Center indictment last week. This lawsuit is a major development I want to highlight for you because I have been talking for months about how the Trump regime is likely going to start targeting quote unquote “left wing” non-profits to punish them for their support of leftist causes. This case isn’t exactly that, but I do think they’re testing the waters and doing whatever they can to wield the law against their non-profit enemies. The grand jury indictment is against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit that fights white supremacy and extremist violence. The organization has had recent internal scandals involving workplace harassment, racial discrimination, and other toxic issues that led to the firing of the founder. It made a name for itself in the 70s investigating the Ku Klux Klan, taking them to court, and providing information to the media and law enforcement to keep tabs on violent extremism in the country, mostly far right violent extremism because that’s mostly who’s doing the violent extremism in this country, despite what the right would have you believe, though since Trump’s re-election that trend is changing for the first time, with a growing proportion of violence being perpetrated by people with left-wing ideology. But historically speaking it is the right wing that is most predisposed to violent extremism in this country. However, as our overton window has shifted, what the SPLC defines as extremist hate has come under increased scrutiny because mainstream Republicans are now like wait we like some of these extremists. For example, Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA was added to the SPLC’s hate map. After Kirk’s murder, Elon Musk took to twitter to claim that the Southern Poverty Law Center is guilty of inciting Kirk’s murder for featuring Kirk in its hatewatch newsletter.

So now that far right extremism has become mainstream and made its way into the White House, that has put organizations that fight that extremism in court, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, in the crosshairs of the Trump regime. So last week SPLC was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, with the DOJ claiming the SPLC misled its donors by not telling them what their money was used for. Specifically, the SPLC according to the indictment has spent over 3 million dollars between 2014 and 2023 supporting far right extremist groups and their members. The payments went to confidential informants who infiltrated the organizations and helped SPLC gather information and form cases against the hate groups that were later used to bring lawsuits or otherwise inform the press and the government about the activities. According to Trump’s personal lawyer turned acting AG Todd Blanche, the government had no idea that SPLC was doing this, they were just funding this violent extremism while claiming to fight it. According to the SPLC, which is likely to put up a very strong fight against these charges, their donors knew about their tactics, which they have used for decades, and not only did the government know about the confidential informants, but the information gathered by SPLC was used by local law enforcement and the FBI, among other times, during Trump’s first term to secure a six month prison sentence against a member of a white supremacist group, to provide the FBI with information about a member of a neo-Nazi group who pleaded guilty to weapons charges, and to provide the FBI with a 45-page dossier warning of potential violence at the Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville Virginia that resulted in the death of a protester. So the DOJ benefitted directly from the SPLC’s use of confidential informants and, allegedly, despite what Todd Blanche claimed, the DOJ knew about it.

Judge Emily Marks of the Federal District of Alabama is overseeing the case. She’s a Trump appointee. The SPLC has such doubts about the way the DOJ handled the case before the grand jury that ultimately delivered the indictment that they’ve requested that the grand jury transcripts be unsealed, something that is pretty rare but could reveal misdealing on the part of the DOJ and it wouldn’t be the first time–unsealing of the grand jury process for the indictment against James Comey revealed potential grand jury misconduct, though the case was ultimately thrown out because the attorney who filed it Lindsay Halligan, wasn’t lawfully in her role.

The Trump regime has picked a formidable opponent in the SPLC–unlike law firms and universities and media companies that have all bent the knee at the first sign of a legal battle with the regime, the SPLC has the experience, the lawyers, and the funding to put up a long fight. And the claims that the Trump regime is bringing against them appear spurious at best. So we’ll see how this unfolds, but the larger picture here is one where the Trump DOJ is once again picking a legal battle based on potentially frivolous claims solely for the purpose of weaponizing the legal system against enemies of the right-wing white Christian nationalist project. And we can criticize the Southern Poverty Law Center for various misdeeds, but it has been a thorn in the side of the right wing project for decades at this point, so it makes sense as a test case for bringing lawsuits against nonprofit organizations in this way, and I think this case marks the beginning of this phase of the Trump regime seeing how far they can get with weaponizing the courts against nonprofits. They tried the universities, they tried the law firms, they tried the media, they tried anti-Israel protesters, they tried personal enemies of Trump, non-profits are next on the list. And that’s not to say they’ve quit attacking all those other entities, but it’s a clearly established pattern that they’re pretty systematically going one by one through the most important institutions in this country and attempting to undermine and dismantle them at every turn. And it is through lawsuits like this that they are attempting to appear legitimate as they do so. Don’t buy it.

Oh also the blue states and cities, don’t forget about those. I live in Minneapolis and while my personal day to day as a white person who was born here has largely gone back to quote unquote “normal” here–I’m not seeing abandoned cars with their windows smashed in like I was in January and February, I’m not getting caught in active ICE operations as I attempt to get groceries, like I was then, I’m not walking around actively on alert like I was then, that doesn’t mean we’re not still dealing with the fallout from the ICE occupation or the ire of the Trump regime. Hundreds if not thousands of people are still facing housing insecurity because they couldn’t work for months for fear of leaving their houses and getting deported, businesses are struggling, I still drive by the MULTIPLE memorial sites dedicated to the victims of state-sponsored violence in my town every day. And literally this morning, FBI agents were here executing 22 search warrants of various businesses around town as part of its ongoing fraud investigation in this state, spurred on by the misleading, juvenile quote unquote “reporting” in a YouTube video by far right influencer Nick Shirley at the beginning of this year, the one where he showed up along with multiple other men and a camera and when various daycare centers were like no you guys can’t enter into our center, he deduced that was clear evidence of fraud. The searches conducted this morning were part of the ongoing investigation by the Trump regime into fraud perpetrated here in Minnesota. I already made a whole episode about this–yes fraud is happening here, yes the state should absolutely be doing more to combat it and knew for at least 15 years that its programs were vulnerable to the exact types of fraud we’ve been seeing in recent years, yes many of the defendants in those cases were of Somali origin. As I always do on this channel, I’m asking you to hold multiple truths at once. That does not mean, however, that Somali people need to be rooted out and all are predisposed to committing crimes. That is a hate filled fascist white nationalist talking point, and another example of the Trump regime taking something that is true, something that happened, and twisting it to fit their own fucked up narrative. That is the spin machine, the propaganda of the state at work here in Minneapolis just like it’s at work telling us the attempted shooting of the president over the weekend means that a high security ballroom is necessary, just like it used Charlie Kirk’s assassination as justification for issuing NSPM-7 to target quote unquote “antifa” ideology despite the first amendment’s protections even of extremist beliefs. It’s all opportunistic spin using tragic events to further their own fucked up ideology. Don’t let it distract you from the bigger picture of what’s going on–the Trump regime is systematically targeting the people and entities and institutions it doesn’t agree with and who stand in the way of their fascist takeover, and they’re making a fucking fortune off our suffering. And Congress is doing jack fucking shit to stop it. Starting May 1st, Trump either needs Congressional approval to continue his war in Iran, or he has 30 days to wind down operations there. Without congressional approval on May 1st, the war becomes even more illegal than it already is because war crimes are always illegal no matter whether or not Congress acts. But this creates a real conundrum for Congress which has mostly been content to sit idly by with its head shoved up its ass doing nothing while Trump commits various atrocities on their watch. My guess is that Congress will continue to do nothing even after that May 1st deadline. Democrats have said they may try to sue the president if he continues hostilities after the deadline as he would technically be breaking the law in doing so. This isn’t completely unprecedented, Obama in 2011 continued bombing Libya beyond the 60 day deadline, saying he was justified in doing so because the US operations there didn’t involve active exchanges of fire with hostile forces or any ground troops. Trump may rely on a similar argument here. Many Republicans have said they’re going to draw the line at the 60 day mark but let’s just say I’m not holding my breath that anything at all will happen. Congress has, for the last year and a half, completely neglected its duty to serve as our voice in government, and it will be of course all of us who pay the biggest price.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like my episode from last week about whether property damage is ever a justified form of protest.