A judge issued an apology to Cole Tomas Allen, the alleged White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner attacker, for how he has been treated while being held in jail.
During a hearing on Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui expressed his apologies to Allen, who has been “held in the safe cell,” according to ABC7 News. Faruqui reportedly said the safe cell was “tantamount to solitary confinement.”
The judge also gave the Washington, DC, Department of Corrections a deadline of Tuesday “to notify when the jail’s housing board will” make a decision regarding “which section of the jail” Allen will be placed in, according to the outlet.
Faruqui’s apology to Allen comes after Allen’s attorneys said in court filings that Allen “was placed on suicide watch shortly after arriving at the D.C. jail.”
Due to Allen being placed on suicide watch, he was put in “what’s known as a ‘safe cell,’ a padded room with constant lighting and 24-hour lockdown conditions,” according to the outlet. Allen’s attorneys claimed that he showed “no signs of being a risk.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) previously charged Allen, 31, with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump, Breitbart News’s Hannah Knudsen reported. Allen was “accused of charging through a magnetometer while armed in an attempt to breach the ballroom” where Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other Trump administration officials were attending the event.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro criticized the judge for believing “a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment.”
“Welcome to Washington, D.C., where U.S. Magistrate Judge Faruqui believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant,” Pirro wrote in a post on X.
Read the full article here