A federal judge in Washington denied the accused White House Correspondents' Association Dinner gunman's attempt to force U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche off his case, ruling Monday that neither their presence at the attack nor Pirro's friendship with President Trump creates a disqualifying conflict of interest.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, issued the order in the case of Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old indicted in early May for allegedly firing a shotgun at a Secret Service officer and attempting to assassinate the president during the annual press dinner on April 25. Allen's defense team had argued that Pirro and Blanche were themselves potential victims of the attack and had no business making prosecutorial decisions in a case so personal to them.
McFadden was unmoved. The judge found that "longstanding precedent" settled the question, and that the prosecutors' attendance at the dinner, their public statements afterward, and Pirro's well-known relationship with Trump did not meet the legal threshold for removal.
Allen's lawyers, Eugene Ohm and Tezira Abe, had pressed an aggressive theory. Both Pirro and Blanche were in the room when the attack allegedly unfolded. That alone, the defense argued, made them potential witnesses, or worse, victims, who could not fairly oversee the prosecution of the man accused of targeting them.
The defense team went further, asking the court to consider whether a special prosecutor should be appointed. "How can the American justice system permit a victim to prosecute a criminal defendant in a case involving them?" the defense attorneys wrote.
They also zeroed in on Pirro's conduct after the shooting. At a press conference, Pirro accused Allen of trying to "bring down as many of the high-ranking Cabinet officials as he could." She told reporters she had been "in the line of fire" and said she now understood "what it feels like now to be hunted."
Allen's team seized on that language, calling Pirro's emotional response "inflammatory, inappropriate, and inaccurate" and arguing it revealed "the depths of her personal interest in this case." Defense lawyer Ohm separately stated that it was "wholly inappropriate for Pirro or Blanche to be making the primary prosecutorial decisions in the case."
Pirro's longtime personal friendship with Trump formed the final pillar of the defense motion. Allen's legal team framed the question bluntly, as the Washington Examiner reported: "How can one of the victim's closest friends prosecute the alleged perpetrator of the offense?"
The motion asked the court to find that "at the very least" an "appearance of partiality" required both officials to step aside.
Judge McFadden acknowledged the facts were "unusual." But unusual, he wrote, does not mean disqualifying. His written order laid out the reasoning in direct terms:
"Citing Blanche's and Pirro's presence at the alleged crime scene along with Pirro's friendship with the President, Allen moves to disqualify both officials from prosecuting his case. The Court denies that motion. In line with longstanding precedent, the Court finds that neither the officials' dinner attendance nor their statements after the fact demonstrate a conflict of interest. Nor does Pirro's friendship with the President."
McFadden found that Pirro and Blanche are "unlikely to be trial witnesses" and do not meet "the legal definition of victims," as Breitbart also reported. Their post-event statements and personal connections to the president, the judge wrote, "likewise present no basis for screening them from the case."
In short, the defense tried to turn proximity into prejudice, and the court said no.
Pirro has shown no sign of backing away from the case since the April 25 attack. At the time Allen was indicted, she issued a statement that left little room for ambiguity about the office's intentions:
"The use of violence to register dissent is anti-democratic at its core. We will pursue the maximum punishment available under the law against anyone who travels to the District of Columbia to engage in such acts."
That language tracked closely with her earlier public remarks. Pirro has pointed to left-wing rhetoric as fuel for assassination attempts in the wake of the shooting, drawing a direct line between political incitement and the violence that unfolded at the dinner.
Allen's defense team argued that this very public posture proved Pirro was too personally invested to be fair. McFadden disagreed. Prosecutors routinely make public statements about high-profile cases. What matters under the law is whether those statements cross a line into prejudicial conduct, and the judge found they did not.
A grand jury indicted Allen in early May on charges that include attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony, and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. He allegedly shot a Secret Service officer during the attack at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The outcome of the officer's injuries was not detailed in the court filings referenced in the ruling.
Allen pleaded not guilty. His defense team has signaled it intends to challenge the prosecution at every procedural turn, the disqualification motion being the first major test.
That test is now over. Pirro and Blanche remain on the case.
Todd Blanche's involvement in the prosecution adds another layer. Blanche, who previously served as Trump's personal defense attorney, was installed as Acting Attorney General after the departure of Pam Bondi. His critics have questioned whether someone with such close ties to the president should oversee a case in which the president is the alleged target.
McFadden's order addressed that head-on. The judge found that Blanche's presence at the dinner and his relationship with the president did not create a legal conflict any more than Pirro's did. The same precedent applied to both.
Blanche has been active across a range of DOJ priorities since taking over, including overseeing investigations into thousands of fraud cases targeting taxpayer funds. His defenders argue that a broad prosecutorial portfolio is exactly what the role demands, and that recusing from the most significant domestic attack on the president in recent memory would be an abdication, not a virtue.
Allen's motion was the first real procedural challenge in a case that will almost certainly produce more. Defense attorneys have already floated the idea of a special prosecutor. McFadden's ruling does not foreclose future motions on different grounds, but it shuts the door firmly on the conflict-of-interest theory as currently presented.
The judge's reasoning rested on established law, not on sympathy for the prosecution. He did not dismiss the defense's concerns as frivolous. He called the circumstances "unusual." But he applied the legal standard and found the defense fell short.
For Pirro's office, the ruling clears the path to move forward with what she has described as a case about the most fundamental threat to democratic governance: political violence aimed at the head of state. Pirro has remained active in other DOJ matters throughout the proceedings, signaling that the shooting case has not consumed her office's bandwidth.
For Allen, the loss means he will face prosecution led by the very officials he tried to sideline. His lawyers will no doubt look for other pressure points. But the first round went to the government, decisively.
There is something telling about the defense strategy here. Allen's lawyers spent considerable energy arguing that the prosecutors are too close to the case. They never explained why closeness to an attempted assassination, being present when someone allegedly opened fire on the president and his protectors, should disqualify the officials charged with enforcing the law.
Every U.S. Attorney in the country has a duty to prosecute violent crime in their jurisdiction. The fact that Pirro and Blanche happened to be in the room when the crime allegedly occurred does not transform them into conflicted parties. It makes them witnesses to the gravity of what they are prosecuting.
McFadden saw that distinction clearly. The defense wanted the court to treat personal experience as bias. The court treated it as irrelevant to the legal standard.
When someone allegedly tries to kill the president at a public dinner and then complains that the prosecutors who were there take it too personally, the complaint tells you more about the defense strategy than about any actual conflict of interest.