The case against the man who burst through security at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner to attack Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet may not be as cut and dried as the Justice Department is making it out to be.
Appearing on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” former US Attorney Joyce Vance claimed that a missing piece of evidence will make it harder to prosecute Cole Tomas Allen for reportedly shooting –– but not killing –– a Secret Service agent, which the DOJ is asserting.
According to the members of the MS NOW panel, there are now questions about whether Allen fired his gun and if the agent was hit by “friendly fire.”
As was noted by co-host Wille Geist, despite their best efforts, the FBI has been unable to turn up the remains of the bullet that struck the agent, which could not knock the legs out from under one of Attorney General Todd Blanche’s major charges against the California man.
After watching a clip of Blanche being less than forthcoming about evidence at a press conference on Tuesday, Vance explained to the panel, “I spent a lot of time prosecuting ATF cases and gun cases. Enough time to know, Willy, that this isn't just any case. This is a case involving a threat to the president of the United States, so all of the best investigative resources are out there.”
“What agents routinely do in a case like this, where you're looking for physical evidence, is they have the ability to create a formation and to sweep the room to find evidence, because with firearms, it's very important to understand the trajectory, right?” she elaborated. “That helps you understand which guns fired, which ammunition, which spent rounds, because you can, in addition to matching up the caliber of the ammunition to the firearm and doing other sorts of testing to identify it, you then have a better picture of the action.”
“The government has a real problem here,” she warned. “They've charged this shooter — one of their three charges against him is discharging his firearm during this incident. And if they can't prove that, then that charge will be dismissed in advance of any additional proceedings in this case.”