White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting suspect Cole Tomas Allen has been linked to a political group called The Wide Awakes, according to the New York Post. The 31-year-old faces charges of two counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence and one count of assault on an officer using a dangerous weapon after breaching security at the Washington Hilton.
The Wide Awakes is a group whose name dates back to a Civil War-era political movement linked to President Abraham Lincoln. The original Wide Awakes, a Republican political organization founded in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 3, 1860, was dedicated to electing Lincoln to the presidency.
A modern Wide Awakes network was launched in 2020, drawing inspiration from the original movement. The new Wide Awakes are a network of thousands of artists, cultural workers, and activists driven by the most urgent social and political issues of our time.
Amplifier.org, one of the founding organizations of the modern Wide Awakes, has denied any affiliation with Cole Allen, stating that they had never heard of him before his arrest.
