White House Correspondents’ Dinner suspect to be charged as Trump prepares to welcome king – US politics live

Donald Trump spoke with CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell in an interview that aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes describing his ordeal at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when shots rang out.

The interview turned frosty when O’Donnell put portions of the gunman’s manifesto to Trump, which appeared to refer to the president as a “rapist” and “pedophile”, prompting him to call O’Donnell a “disgrace” and the media “horrible people”.

Recounting his events of the shooting, Trump told 60 Minutes that his curiosity probably slowed the Secret Service’s efforts to rush him to safety.

“I wanted to see what was happening,” Trump said. “I wasn’t making it that easy for them. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of problem, a bad one – and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom.

“I was surrounded by great people,” Trump added. “And I probably made them act a little more slowly. I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute.’”

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Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.The suspected gunman in the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday evening, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, from Torrance, California, is due to appear in court later today.

He is expected to be formally charged with using a firearm during a violent crime and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.

“There’s a lot of federal charges that could be in play beyond those two charges but it depends on us understanding his motive, his intent, his premeditation of what led into him deciding he was going to do what he did last night,” acting US attorney general Todd Blanche told CBS News’ Face the Nation programme.

Preliminary findings suggest the shooter targeted the US president, Donald Trump, and officials in his administration, according to Blanche, who said the suspect should appear before a federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

The suspect’s writings – reportedly found in his hotel room – are being examined as part of the investigation into the attack. An alleged manifesto was reported earlier in which the suspect called himself a “Friendly Federal Assassin” and created a list of targets for the shooting, formatted from highest to lowest priority, with officials at the top.