This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:

• Cole Allen was accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump in Saturday when he was tackled with two guns outside the White House correspondents’ dinner.

• An FBI affidavit in support of the charges quoted from a manifesto Allen sent to family just before the thwarted attack in which he said: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

• King Charles and Queen Camilla arrived in Washington for a state visit. Video of the handshake between the UK and US heads of state appeared to show that Trump did engage in his usual attempt to assert dominance by yanking the hand of the king towards himself, as if in a tug of war, but the king appeared ready for the maneuver, and quickly pulled his hand back while still maintaining his grip.

• In the aftermath of the thwarted attack, three Republican senators called for the public to immediately fund the construction of the White House ballroom Trump has his heart set on. “Hell no,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded.

• During his interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Trump repeated a false claim he has made at least three times: that the BBC used AI to put words in his mouth and alter his remarks to supporters before the Capitol riot on January 6 2021 .

In the aftermath of the thwarted attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner, by a gunman who was tackled outside the Washington Hilton Hotel’s ballroom, three Republican senators called for the public to immediately fund the construction of the White House ballroom Donald Trump has his heart set on, but which would not have been used to host the dinner.

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump wrote on his social media platform on Sunday.

Senators Lindsey Graham, Katie Britt and Eric Schmidt told reporters on Monday that they planned to introduce legislation to spend $400m of taxpayer funds to pay for the ballroom Trump destroyed the entire East Wing of the White House to make room for.

“The sooner we get the ballroom built, the more hardened it is, the better it is for the country,” Graham said.

“The number one job of the federal government is national security; and the number one job of national security I think would be to protect the commander-in-chief, and to have infrastructure under the ballroom that is very national security-centric,” Graham added.

Asked about the Republican plan for taxpayers to fund the ballroom, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: “Hell no.”

“They demolished the historic East Wing of the White House without any sort of process, I mean it’s actually deeply shocking. And the idea that they’re going to make this palace on the taxpayer’s dime,” the congresswoman added, “it’s just not acceptable.”

During his interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Donald Trump repeated a false claim he has made repeatedly in recent months: that a BBC documentary on his remarks to supporters before the Capitol riot on January 6 2021 used AI to put words in his mouth.

“How about the BBC?” Trump asked the interviewer Norah O’Donnell. “They had me saying a horrible statement. And I said, ‘I never said that’. It turned out they gave me an AI, a little AI treatment where they had my lips speaking words of hate, tremendous hate, that I never said.

“They actually had me making a major statement, and it wasn’t me. It was my face. It was my lips. My lips were perfectly in sync with the words. I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’” Trump added.

“I hear you, Mr President,” O’Donnell replied, either unaware or unwilling to say that Trump’s allegation about the BBC documentary was entirely false.

In fact, the BBC did not use AI, but spliced together two parts of Trump’s speech that day, and has apologized for the misleading edit, which combined words the president did speak from sections of his speech almost an hour apart. No words were inserted in Trump’s mouth, through the use of AI or any other technique.

Trump, however, has said on multiple occasions since he filed a $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit against the BBC over the way the documentary edited his speech, that the British public broadcaster used AI to fabricate statements he never made.

“I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth, literally. They put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something,” Trump told reporters in December. “They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with January 6th that I didn’t say.”

Sitting with the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, at a St Patrick’s Day event in March, the president repeated the false claim about a matter he is engaged in active litigation over: “They put words in my mouth, and they said I said some pretty bad things, and I didn’t say them. It was AI generated. And I said ‘I never said that.’ In fact, some of my people said, ‘Wow, that was pretty bad stuff you said.’”

“And then we found out it was AI generated,” Trump said, incorrectly. “And they admit they made a mistake, BBC.”

As our colleague David Smith reports, beneath the pageantry of the royal visit, there are also tensions over “the continuing scandal surrounding the king’s younger brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and his links to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein”.

Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, is convening Epstein survivors on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and urging the king to meet them. He said: “The British people have actually been very strong on this Epstein matter, demanding accountability and justice – stronger than the American government in terms of taking action. So the king doesn’t have to get into any details of his brother’s case but it’s just standing with survivors and calling for accountability around the world.”

The British journalist Emily Maitlis said on the News Agents podcast she had been told that, until two weeks ago, Queen Camilla was “very keen” to meet victims of Epstein alongside Melania Trump. Maitlis added: “She said, ‘I’ve spent my life fighting for women’s voices, I’ve spent my life fighting for victims, we will find a way to do it.’”

But palace officials have made clear there will be no meetings with Epstein survivors during the trip, citing legal concerns over ongoing investigations in the US and Britain.

Epstein was of course also linked to Donald Trump, since the two men socialized together for nearly two decades, from the 1980s through the early 2000s.

Last summer, Trump told reporters that he was irked decades ago when Epstein hired young, female spa attendants away from Mar-a-Lago, including Virginia Robert Giuffre, who became one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers.

Giuffre, who died last year, said in a legal complaint that she was hired away from the Mar-a-Lago spa by Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000, when she was 16. Giuffre also alleged in her complaint that she was first abused by Epstein and Maxwell together, and then “lent out to other powerful men”, including Prince Andrew.

While Charles is the UK’s head of state, but not its head of government, the current UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, is also bound up in an Epstein-related scandal. After Trump was elected in 2024, Starmer decided to appoint another old friend of Epstein’s, Peter Mandelson, as the UK’s ambassador to the US.

But the release of documents from Epstein’s estate and by the Department of Justice over the past year revealed the depth of Mandelson’s ties to the late child sex offender, forcing Starmer to fire him.

After the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had sent Epstein a bawdy drawing and note for his 50th birthday in 2003, which the president insisted in a lawsuit was both fake and did not exist, the late sex offender’s estate provided the entire bound album of birthday greetings from Epstein’s friends and associates. It included not just Trump’s note, but also a lengthy, gushing letter from Mandelson.

Longtime Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, now the US attorney for the District of Columbia, told Fox News viewers on Monday that the government expected to file more charges against Cole Allen, the suspected gunman who was charged on Monday with trying to assassinate Donald Trump.

Speaking to her former colleague Laura Ingraham, Pirro expressed confidence that prosecutors would be able to convicted Allen, who was formally charged with three crimes in federal court on Monday:

• Attempt to assassinate the president of the United States

• Transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony

• Discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence

An FBI agent’s affidavit in support of a criminal complaint against Allen detailed the probable cause for the charges.

To establish the first charge, the affidavit quotes from a part of a manifesto Allen allegedly sent to family members shortly before he was tackled and subdued on Saturday night outside the Hilton Hotel ballroom where the president and senior officials were attending the White House correspondents’ dinner.

“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” the manifesto attributed to Allen reads. “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest”, it adds.

The grounds for the second charge include details of two guns purchased by Allen in California that match those that authorities took from him after he was subdued on Saturday, and his travel across state lines by train.

There is, as a reporter noted at a news conference earlier with Pirro and the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, no evidence in the affidavit that Cole did fire his weapon. Instead, the account alleged that Cole ran through a security checkpoint “holding a long gun”. It continues:

As he did so, U.S. Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot. U.S. Secret Service Officer V.G. was shot once in the chest; Officer V.G. was wearing a ballistic vest at the time. 14. Officer V.G. drew his service weapon and fired multiple times at ALLEN, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot. ALLEN was subsequently arrested.

Ingraham also reminded Pirro that juries in Washington DC have rejected charges against anti-Trump protesters, like a man who tossed a sandwich at a federal officer. Pirro said that this case was different, in her estimation, because the thwarted attack took place near where hundreds of journalists had gathered for the dinner.

During their brief visit to the White House on Monday, King Charles and Queen Camilla were taken past a large portrait of Donald Trump based on a news photograph of his defiant response to an attempted assassination in 2024.

After tea, the king and queen were then treated to a tour of the White House kitchen garden on the south lawn, which featured a look at a new White House-shaped beehive, and a chat with the White House kitchen staff who harvest the honey generated by the bees.

At one point, according to a news wire photographer, the US president dropped a bee the group was being shown.

In his interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Donald Trump lambasted Norah O’Donnell for asking him to react to the words of the man accused of trying to assassinate him, Cole Allen, who wrote in his manifesto: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

After telling the CBS News interviewer that only “horrible people” would ask him about that, the president said: “Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”

O’Donnell did a double take and said: “Oh you think – do you think he was referring to you?”

“I’m not a pedophile. Excuse me. Excuse me. I’m not a pedophile,” Trump replied. “You read that crap from some sick person? I got associated with all stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things.”

Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that the partial release of documents from the federal investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender he socialized with for nearly two decades, had “exonerated” him and implicated only Democrats. In fact, a large number of documents have not been released and a number of Republicans have faced questions over their relationship with Epstein, including Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.

The president then attacked O’Donnell again, saying: “You should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”

Trump was apparently happy enough with his answer to O’Donnell’s question that the exchange was included in a highlight reel from the interview posted on the White House’s YouTube channel.

Despite the president’s anger at being asked about what he took to be a description of him, which has become common among his critics amid widespread anger at his long friendship with Epstein, an FBI affidavit in support of a criminal complaint against Allen, filed in federal court on Monday, quotes the same part of the manifesto as part of its case that the suspect planned to assassinate Trump.

According to the affidavit, Allen sent a note to family and friends by email shortly before he attempted to charge into the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night in Washington, is which he described his motivation as follows:

On to why I did any of this:

I am a citizen of the United States of America.

What my representatives do reflects on me.

And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.

(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.) While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)

Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest

As numerous critics of Trump were quick to point out on social media, the judge in the 2023 civil trial in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E Jean Carroll, wrote that the jury did, in fact, find that Trump had raped Carroll, in the way that word is understood in “common modern parlance”.

While no evidence has been released by Trump’s justice department to show that he took part in Epstein’s sexual assault of minors, Trump did tell New York magazine in 2002 that he was aware that the friend of 15 years he called a “[t]errific guy”, and “a lot of fun to be with”, had a reputation as someone who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.

Video of the handshake between the UK and US heads of state appears to show that Donald Trump did engage in his usual attempt to assert dominance by yanking the hand of King Charles towards himself, as if in a tug of war, but the king appeared ready for the maneuver the president is known for, and quickly pulled his hand back while still maintaining his grip.

Trump’s aggressive handshake, and how to combat it, has been studied in advance by visiting world leaders and heads of state since his first term, following a playbook created by the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

King Charles and Queen Camilla just arrived at the White House, where they were greeted by Donald and Melania Trump. The heads of state and their spouses made some brief small talk, which was not audible on the live stream, posed for photographs and then went inside.

Reporters are gathering now at the White House to cover the arrival of King Charles and Queen Camilla.

According to a note from the White House pool reporter, the media was “gathering at the Palm Room doors for the King and Queen of the United Kingdom’s arrival”.

The Palm Room is one of the many parts of the White House Donald Trump has put his personal stamp on. This photo from January shows that it now features a photograph of the US president with Vladimir Putin.

Live video of the arrival is streaming now at the top of this page.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, offered some details of how the attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner unfolded.

Cole Tomas Allen, the man accused in the attack, traveled from Los Angeles to Washington DC by train via Chicago, arriving 24 April, Blanche said. He had a reservation at the gala’s venue, the Washington Hilton, from that day through the 26th.

Blanche outlined how the attack unfolded:

Approximately at 8.40 on the night of 25 April, Allen approached the security checkpoint on the terrace level of the hotel, which is, again, a floor above where the dinner was taking place. He ran through the magnetometers holding a long gun. As he did so, US Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot.

One Secret Service officer was shot in the chest, but was wearing a ballistic test that worked. This heroic officer, who was hit, fired five times at Allen, who was not shot, but fell to the ground and was promptly arrested.

The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, has just convened a press conference where he is outlining the charges against Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old who allegedly attacked the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday in an effort to kill Donald Trump.

“Today, the Department of Justice filed three federal charges in United States federal court against Cole Thomas Allen. The first count is attempted assassination of the president of the United States. This count is punishable by up to life in prison,” Blanche said.

The two other charges Allen faces are interstate transportation of a firearm, which is punishable by as many as 10 years in prison, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, which is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison, and a maximum of life in prison.

King Charles and Queen Camilla have just stepped off the plane at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland as they begin a four-day state visit. Here’s footage from the scene:

Here’s a rundown of what they are expected to do – and not do – during their trip:

Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old arrested after allegedly attacking Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner, has been charged with trying to assassinate the president, and firearms offenses, Reuters reports.

A judge granted prosecutors’ request to temporarily keep Allen behind bars, with a hearing scheduled for Thursday on his continued detention.

Allen sat wearing a blue prison jumpsuit at a table where he was flanked by US Marshals during his appearance in a Washington DC federal courtroom, according to Reuters.

Donald Trump just called for Jimmy Kimmel to be fired for a joke made in a monologue prior to Saturday’s attack on the White House correspondent’s dinner, in which the comedian said first lady Melania Trump resembled an “expectant widow”.

Alleging that the gunman who tried to storm the gala with the White House press corps “was there for a very obvious and sinister reason”, the 79-year-old Trump wrote on Truth Social:

I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.

It’s not the first time the Trump administration has come after Kimmel for humor criticizing the Republican president. Here’s a look back at that September incident in which ABC took Kimmel off the air then reinstated him amid an outcry over his right to free speech:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt urged Congress to restart funding to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been partially shut down since mid-February amid a standoff between Democrats and Republicans over immigration enforcement.

“Saturday night served as yet another reminder of how important it is to fund the Department of Homeland Security. It is shameful that the United States Congress has kept this vital agency defunded for 73 days, the longest shutdown of a federal agency in US history,” Leavitt said, adding that the Secret Service, a sub-agency of the DHS, “has been directly impacted by this reckless political game and gamesmanship.”

Funding for the DHS lapsed after Democrats refused to support an appropriations bill for the agency unless it included new restrictions on immigration enforcement operations. Negotiations between the White House and Senate Democrats on those restrictions eventually broke down, and the Senate unanimously passed a bill to fund all of the DHS with the exception of some of its agencies focused on deportations.

But House Republicans have refused to pass that bill until those agencies – Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection – are funded. Republicans expect to do that along party lines using the reconciliation procedure, with the Senate taking a major step towards doing that last week:

Karoline Leavitt quickly pivoted to blaming Donald Trump’s opponents for the attack at the White House correspondent’s association on Saturday, including Democratic lawmakers and reporters.

“Nobody in recent years has faced more bullets and more violence than President Trump. This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat party and even some in the media,” Leavitt said.

“This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump, day after day after day for 11 years, has helped to legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment.”

She singled out “those who constantly, falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler to score political points” for fueling the violence.

Kiran Stacey and Pippa Crerar

King Charles will be spared the potential humiliation of being upbraided in public by Donald Trump this week after the White House agreed that any meeting between the two men should be held off camera.

British officials have pushed for the Oval Office meeting between the monarch and the US president to be held off camera for fear of a repeat of the scenes when Trump berated the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in front of the world’s press.

Sources involved in planning the trip say Charles will pose for the cameras at the start of his centrepiece bilateral meeting tomorrow, but will not be filmed talking about anything substantive.

UK ministers have pinned great hopes on the state visit, which they are hoping will help repair the relationship between the two countries at one of its most difficult periods in decades.

With Trump threatening retaliation for criticism of the Iran war by UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the British government is hoping the king might be able to talk the US president down from some of his more aggressive statements.

The king will attend several other events with Trump, at which he will be accompanied by palace officials as well as UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, in line with usual practice for a state visit.

Diplomatic sources suggested that Cooper, who has previously travelled with the monarch to the Vatican, was ready to step in to deal with any awkward moments if required.

She’s ready to leap into action as a human shield for the king should Trump start criticising Starmer or the UK more generally, as he is prone to do.

The Department of Justice will hold a 3pm ET news conference today, led by acting attorney general Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel, and US attorney Jeanine Pirro, following the initial appearance in federal court of the suspected White House correspondents’ dinner gunman.

We’ll bring you all the key lines from that when it gets under way later.

Speaking to Fox News earlier, secretary of state Marco Rubio described his experience of Saturday night’s shocking shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner.

“I didn’t hear shots I just saw a bunch of security people rushing in,” he said. “The first thing you wonder immediately is ... is there an internal threat, is there a threat inside the ballroom itself?”

He said he watched the staff follow “all the security protocols”, adding:

It was sort of an unfortunate situation that happened there, where one individual can disrupt what is one of the bigger nights in Washington, especially when the president attends.

That’s kind of the world we live in right now.

As well as Donald Trump, many key figures in the presidential line of succession including vice-president JD Vance and Rubio himself were at the event.

Rubio said that after administration officials “went backstage to the command center, where the president sat in the back” after being rushed out of the ballroom, it was “quickly assessed” that the “continuity of government” was in place.

Sort of the first assessment that needed to be made was to be clear that all the continuity of government things were in place, and that was quickly assessed to be the case.

In a statement issued today, the Washington Hilton hotel, the venue for Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, has said it had been operating under “stringent” Secret Service protocols.

“The hotel was operating under stringent security protocols for the property as directed by the U.S. Secret Service, which led security,” a hotel spokesperson said in a statement, as quoted by Reuters.

The Secret Service, which is responsible for the president’s safety, worked in coordination with a range of security teams, including local Washington DC police and hotel security, the spokesperson added.

Ro Khanna, the Democratic congressman who co-authored the legislation authorizing release of the investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein, will on Tuesday convene a roundtable to discuss the disgraced financier’s abuses ahead of King Charles’s address to a joint session of Congress.

Khanna last month sent the king a letter asking him to meet with survivors of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, but Charles declined through his lawyers.

The roundtable scheduled for 11am will feature Sharlene Rochard, a survivor of Epstein’s abuse and Sky and Amanda Roberts, relatives of Virginia Giuffre, who said she was abused by the king’s brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, an allegation he denies.

The king is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress after 3pm on Tuesday.

Though Donald Trump and other top government officials – including vice-president JD Vance and speaker of the House Mike Johnson – attended the White House correspondent’s dinner, it was not given the government’s highest security classification for events, the Washington Post reports.

Occasions that bring together such high-ranking figures in the US government are often designated a “National Special Security Event”, however it is unclear if such a designation would have been appropriate for the annual White House press corps dinner which presidents have often – but not always – attended. Here’s more, from the Post:

When so many officials gather in one place for official functions such as an inauguration or State of the Union address, the secretary of homeland security typically puts the Secret Service in charge of coordinating all security through a formal designation known as a “National Special Security Event.”

There was no such designation on Saturday night at an event also attended by thousands of journalists and other government officials, according to local and federal officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss security details. The suspected gunman, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, wrote a statement saying he wanted to target members of the Trump administration and ridiculed what he called lax security at the hotel, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the writings. He said Iranian agents could easily have brought more dangerous weapons to the venue, according to the text.

…

One D.C. government official said they were not aware of an instance when the annual dinner had been designated as a National Special Security Event. It typically hosts high-ranking officials, but the lineup of those who attend varies from year to year.

WHCA Executive Director Steve Thomma also said in a text he was not aware of such a designation in the past. “Not a thing that’s ever come up in my time as executive director,” said Thomma, who has been the association’s executive director since 2017.

The Secret Service considered the site it was charged with protecting to be the ballroom and the immediate perimeter around it, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because there is a pending prosecution. The agency did not take responsibility for the entire Hilton hotel.

Outside, D.C. police handled road closures and traffic. In between, there was no clear responsibility for the security of the thousands of guests and rest of the Hilton property, where authorities said the suspect had booked a room.

Melania Trump this morning accused Jimmy Kimmel of “hateful and violent rhetoric” and said it was “time for ABC to take a stand” against the comedian who has long been critical of Donald Trump and his policies.

The first lady appeared to be referring to a monologue by Kimmel broadcast before the Saturday attack on the White House correspondent’s dinner, in which he referred to Melania Trump as an “expectant widow”.

Her criticism follows an episode last September where ABC suspended Kimmel after Brendan Carr, the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened the network for jokes the comedian made about the president. The incident sparked an uproar amid allegations that Carr was attacking the constitutional right to free speech, and ABC late brought Kimmel back on air.

Here’s what Melania Trump said, in a post on X:

Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.

People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.

A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him.

Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.

Here’s more about the September episode:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt just announced she will hold a briefing at 1pm ET today.

We’ll let you know what she has to say.

Cole Tomas Allen sent a message apologizing to his family before his arrest for allegedly attacking the White House correspondent’s dinner, the Washington Post reports.

“I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it,” Allen wrote. The message did not name Donald Trump or outline plans to assassinate him, but was critical of his policies.

“I am a citizen of the United States of America,” Allen wrote, according to the Post. “What my representatives do reflects on me.”

That message prompted his brother to notify police in New London, Connecticut. Police and Secret Service agents in Montgomery county, Maryland, later interviewed his sister, who lives in the city of Rockville, not far from Washington DC.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, will convene a meeting this week with top security officials to discuss how to ensure the safety of Donald Trump’s future public appearances, according to the Associated Press.

Citing a senior White House official, the AP reports the meeting will bring together top Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security officials, as well as members of the White House operations team to discuss what went right at the White House correspondents dinner on Saturday, while “exploring additional options” for securing future events.

The shooting in the White House correspondents’ gala has prompted questions over security with some asking how a shooter was able to get close to where Donald Trump and many other senior administration officials were gathered and many others praising the actions of law enforcement that swiftly stopped the attack.

As details about the shooting at the Washington Hilton continued to surface, the alleged shooter Cole Tomas Allen, 31, mocked an “insane” lack of security at the Washington dinner in a manifesto reportedly send to his family 10 minutes before his assault started.

“I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” the suspect said in the alleged manifesto first obtained by the New York Post, and which expressed hostility to Trump and his administration.

Allen, a Caltech-graduate, said “this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again,” he wrote.

According to the Associated Press, the Secret Service has long used the annual dinner to put some agents through their paces, in part because it was studied after the shooting of Ronald Reagan there by John Hinckley Jr on 30 March 1981.

The hotel built extensive security modifications specifically to accommodate the president, including a secured garage designed to fit the presidential limo, which leads to a dedicated elevator and staircase to a secured suite.

But hotels, while privately-owned, function as “public accommodations” meaning they remain open to other guests staying there and staying at the building ahead of time – apparently that being the method the attacker was able to access the hotel with his weapons.

As we mentioned in the opening post, King Charles and Queen Camilla are visiting the US today on the first day of a four day trip to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence and celebrate UK-US relations.

Charles, however, will have to walk a tight diplomatic tightrope as the so-called “special relationship” is under serious strain due to Trump’s belittling of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, for refusing to get actively involved in the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Reuters recently reported that an internal Pentagon email suggested reviewing the US position ‌on the Falklands as punishment for the UK’s cautious stance on the war, putting even more pressure on the high-stakes visit.

We have some details on the activities Charles and Camilla are expected to partake in over the week in what will be the first British state visit to the US since the late Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 2007.

Trump and the first lady, Melania, will greet Charles and Camilla at the White House at 4.15pm today, before having a private “tea” and going on a “beehive tour”.

The king is also due to visit Virginia and New York during the trip, and is expected to attend a state banquet held for him and Camilla.

My colleagues Fabiola Cineas, George Chidi and Robyn Vinter filed this report:

Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles, has no record of criminal charges or a civil court history in Los Angeles county, according to a records search.

A LinkedIn profile with the name “Cole Allen” showed a picture of a man which appeared to match the photo shared by Donald Trump.

On the social media profile, Allen said he was an engineer with a passion for game development, based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

“Mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth,” according to his profile, which noted that he had an undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology. The profile also states Allen achieved a masters in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills, last year.

Early reports suggest those who had known Allen in his younger years were surprised to discover he was the suspect.

A former high school volleyball teammate at Pacific Lutheran high school in Gardena, California, told NBC News his experience was that Allen was a “borderline genius” and “super stable”.

“Other people study hard,” said the former teammate, who did not want to be named. “He didn’t have to study. It would just come to him. He was really, really smart.”

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.

“I wasn’t worried,” Trump said in the interview when asked how worried he was about possible injuries after hearing the gun shots. “I understand life. We live in a crazy world.”

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 program.

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 Trump administration officials at the top.

Despite the shooting raising security concerns, Buckingham Palace released a statement yesterday evening confirming that King Charles and Queen Camilla are going ahead with their plans to visit the US on Monday.

It is understood there will be some modest adjustments to one or two royal engagements during the trip, but the overall plan remains unchanged, as my colleague Robyn Vinter notes in this story.

The king is due to visit Virginia, ​New York and Washington DC during the four-day trip to mark the 250th ​anniversary of ​US ⁠independence. He will meet Trump privately and will take part in a state banquet held for him and Queen Camilla.