Yesterday is one of those days we’re going to remember simply because of the big events that happened within it. And we’re talking about the mixing and the meeting of so many issues of world consequence and the intersections with so many points of history. Most urgently, we need to look at what happened yesterday in a Washington, D.C., Federal courtroom where the man now charged with the attempted assassination of the President of the United States, Cole Tomas Allen, was officially charged with those crimes. Now, there were, in legal terms, some very interesting things that happened there. And some of them are under the surface, some of them were right up front.

Number one, that court appearance yesterday was the first time that the Department of Justice had officially used the defendant’s name. And as we say, that is legally very, very important. He had been in custody and there were others who were connecting dots and identifying him. There were even copies of the document he had written identified as a manifesto that were being passed around. But the important thing to recognize is that it is absolutely important, under the rule of law, that law enforcement and those who will prosecute crimes, follow the law specifically. And so it is a part of our entire system of law that brought about what happened yesterday.

There was, however, a surprise yesterday, and the surprise was the most important charge brought against Cole Allen, as he is now being commonly referred to in national conversation. Cole Allen was charged with the attempted assassination of the President of the United States. Now, are you surprised that that was his intent? Probably not. Are you surprised that the charge was brought yesterday? Well, probably not, but maybe you should be. And that’s because generally when you have this kind of case unfolding, you have lesser charges sufficient to hold the defendant, significant to underline the necessity of holding the defendant, and with the announcement that further charges are likely, what happened yesterday went beyond what had been expected by many legal authorities, simply because it was thought he was going to be charged with a violent act and using a weapon in order to carry out a violent act. But yesterday he was actually charged with the attempted assassination of the President of the United States.

Is it surprising that this is the issue on the table? No, that’s not surprising. What is surprising, and has surprised many legal observers, is that that charge came explicitly in what took place yesterday in the very first public legal occasion when you had basically an arraignment there before a federal magistrate judge. Now, that federal magistrate judge, also went on to take some action. Matthew Sharbaugh is the judge, the magistrate judge. It was announced by the judge that the defendant is now going to be charged with attempting to assassinate the President of the United States. And as the judge said, this would almost assuredly mean life in prison as a sentence.

So the moral stakes here and the legal stakes are made abundantly clear. Again, the surprise is not that this charge was eventually brought against him. The surprise is that this charge came at the very first opportunity, which simply underlines the fact that the federal authorities must believe they have an incredibly convincing case. And they already have. Right at this point, they already have adequate evidence to prosecute this case, and at least in their determination to win a conviction.

So that tells us a lot. It tells us that when we were thinking about these issues yesterday, we didn’t understand the federal agents, the federal prosecutors are actually ahead of where we thought they were and others thought they were in terms of bringing this case. So this isn’t a subsequent charge. This is right out of the gate, the charge of the attempted assassination of the President of the United States. Now, President Trump, on the CBS News program 60 Minutes, on Sunday night, had indicated that he believed this was so. Others have also indicated that they believed that this intention was already there. 

But then again, we have something else, and that is the manifesto that was written by this man who is now officially charged with the attempted assassination of the President of the United States. This manifesto is exactly the kind of thing we have seen, but it’s also exactly not. And by that, I mean, when you have people who write a manifesto about this kind of crime, whether it’s the Unabomber going a long way back, a much larger manifesto, by the way, or when you’re talking about the document that was sent to friends and family members, most importantly to a few family members by the suspect in this case, now officially charged in this case, the defendant, and once again, we’re talking about Cole Allen, the manifesto is a real mix of things. And so I’ve had an opportunity to look at it and it’s very clear that what you have here is a mind that became obsessed with President Trump and a mind in which there was the effort to convince himself that what he had to do was to carry out dramatic action in order to basically gain his goal of removing Donald Trump as President of the United States. And so even as people who have known him for years, they’re very surprised that he could do anything like this, the reality is that the document rather speaks for itself. 

The document was 1,052 words, we are told. It was signed Cole ‘coldForce’ ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Allen all that in his own self-description. He spoke of what he called the rules of engagement for his shooting. He went on to say that he justified it in his own mind as his own form of righteous duty. And so he apologizes to his parents. He apologizes to his colleagues and students for basically lying to them about why he was going to be away. And listen to this lying, quote, “I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for most wanted.” So when you look at this, I’ll just say, as someone who’s seen these kinds of documents, whether from the Unabomber or others, this is written, I would say at least appears, somewhat tongue in cheek. In other words, it’s not at all clear this is really written to the people to whom it is addressed, but rather in order to offer some kind of public justification or explanation for why this man undertook his murderous intent.

He says this, “And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Now, clearly he’s making reference there to President Trump, who by the way, immediately spoke of his absolute offense at the words that were used here, but the reason this is so important is for us to understand that this is directed to the President of the United States in such a way that it justifies the charge of which he is now arraigned, and that is the attempted assassination of the President of the United States.

In moral terms, this is just massive. And I think that Americans, and especially American Christians, just need to pause for a moment and recognize the gravity of what we’re talking about here. We are talking about, yet again, the attempted assassination of the President of the United States. When you have one who is constitutionally the President of the United States, who is then targeted for assassination, it is not merely an act of violence against an individual. It is an act of violence against our entire constitutional order and an act of violence against the entire civilization.

Now, he went on to say he wasn’t pressing his case against the National Guard, the Capitol police, hotel employees or guests. He says they’re not targets at all, but then he also goes on to list objections to what he did. And this is where things from a Christian perspective get really twisted, okay? His objection, number one, as a Christian, you should turn the other cheek. He says, “Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person” Well, I’m not going to read all that he had to say here, but basically it is interesting that he has a background enough to know some of the Christian language. He has a background enough to know some of the objections that are going to be delivered to him, but in a very dark way, he just turns this around and he goes on to say he’s not obligated to turn the other cheek because this is an injury not against him, but others.

Objection number two, this is not a convenient time for you to do this. Well, again, that’s not a very serious statement in the first place.

Number three, you didn’t get them all. His response, very chilling, very cold, “Got to start somewhere.” And this tells you a whole lot about how he’s thinking. You got to start somewhere. This is also reminiscent of the fact that during the 19th century with multiple presidential assassinations, one of the main political motivations behind those assassinations was the embrace of anarchy, which is the denial not only of this government, but of any government. It was a 19th century movement, but it does now ricochet through history in some of the radical worldviews that are still very much seen in our own day. 

I think this is the most chilling part of the manifesto. “Objection three, you didn’t get them all.” Rebuttal, “got to start somewhere.” So this is very much like the language of unrestrained revolution that marked some of the most significant revolutionaries of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. You can’t do anything significant without the shedding of blood. You don’t solve all the problems with the initial violent act, but it’s supposed to send a signal through the entire society that will lead to a succession of violent acts in order to bring about some kind of end, some kind of political end. And that usually means the toppling of a government. And you can simply see that this is very familiar to us in an historical perspective that doesn’t make it less evil. Instead, it just underlines this is part of a long history of violence, political violence. In this case, political violence all the way to the point of attempted assassination of the President of the United States.

All right, but there’s something else we need to see here. Number one, the rule of law is operating as it should. The rule of law is operating with law enforcement doing its assigned job. No further. With the prosecutorial agencies doing exactly their job, not going further, with the judge in this case, a US magistrate judge, the initial judge dealing with this doing exactly what was in his constitutional stewardship. This is really, really important. You can’t defend constitutional order by violating it. That’s one of the reasons why all of these steps are being undertaken so scrupulously and so publicly. That’s important.

Something else we need to observe is that even as we’re very thankful for the very heroic and courageous role played by law enforcement, and that means all who were involved, but in particular federal agents and specifically the Secret Service, you can count on the fact there are going to be all kinds of rebound questions out of this like, how could this have happened? One of the big questions is, how in the world was a situation allowed to develop in which you had the President of the United States, the second in line, the Vice President of the United States, the third in line, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and members of the cabinet, variously, some of them included within the line of succession, all in one place at one time? Not only that, in a non-federal facility. Yes, not a government facility. This is a commercial hotel, very well known, inaugural balls, previous presidential speeches, and all the rest. This is a situation that in retrospect never should have happened, and you could almost count on now will never happen again. And so you’re looking at this as a turning point in the history of what happens and doesn’t happen in a city like Washington, D.C. But here’s something else to track. There are going to be all kinds of questions about how this would-be assassin could have come so close to being successful.

As some observers have pointed out rather chillingly, if this had been a man wearing a suicide vest, it could have ended up with a very different result simply because of how close we know he got there within the facility. Here is something else. It is in the document that was sent by Cole Allen to his family in which he said, “What I got,” meaning security basically, “is nothing.” He said, “Like I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo,” those are his words. He says he didn’t find it. I’m not going to repeat some of his language, but he says, “No security, not in transport, not in the hotel, not in the event.”

Now, that’s not true. It’s not true that there was no security in the event. However, it has become very clear that he was able to carry these weapons through the hotel facility, into the area, subterranean there in the hotel where this expansive ballroom is found. He was able to get right up to what was the final security checkpoint. So even though he’s not specifically totally right here, he is certainly not totally wrong.

He says he was shocked by the lack of security. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.” He says that the security was all focused outside the hotel. That’s very telling. We know that he took a train to Chicago, from Chicago to Washington, D.C. He did that in order to avoid some of the security that would have come with traveling by commercial aircraft. He then went to the hotel and had been there for days where he knew this event was going to take place and the President was scheduled to speak. He was able to do reconnaissance to set all kinds of things up. And then he noted the security that was very visible was directed outside the hotel, not inside of it. Very interesting, very telling.

From a Christian worldview perspective, I want us to note something else. When you look at an evil act and then you backtrack to an evil intention, one of the amazing things is what people with an evil intention see, how they size up, this is the essence of many crime dramas or movies, detective movies, the person who is about to carry out a crime has to be incredibly careful to size up the situation, to evaluate the situation. And in very chilling words, he pointed out, “You know what? The security is directed from the outside,” outside, when the real problem, as we now know, was inside.

And so the bottom line is that yesterday made history. You now have the federal government saying the suspect’s name out loud, he’s not just a suspect now. He’s officially charged with some of the most serious crimes that exist in terms of the entire federal code, the attempted assassination of the President of the United States, the intended use of a violent weapon. And by the way, we know that he fired off at least one shot that did hit a Secret Service agent who was wearing a vest and we’re very thankful that his life was preserved. But the deadly intent is made all the more clear by the chilling language used by this man in the manifesto he wrote.

Isn’t that also very interesting about the pattern of sin? Sin, and an act of this kind of magnitude, you know what? It requires some kind of, well, at least attempted justification. And it is interesting that this man decided he was going to offer an attempted justification. Now, obviously it falls flat on its face from the get-go. They always do, but it tells us a great deal about how the human heart, given over to evil, actually works.

We’ll pick up on this with developments in days to come. One of the big things to watch right now is how the dynamic between the left and the right in the United States works out with this particular man now charged with the crime because his manifesto is linked to other things in which he very clearly had a political direction in his life that some people seem now to have seen and others say they did not see, lots of issues are going to be raised and we’ll be tracing those with you.

Obviously, the situation there, beginning Saturday night in that ballroom in Washington, began to change all considerations. And that became very clear with the arrival yesterday of the British royal couple for a British royal visit, a state visit, the first state visit of this kind during the second administration of President Donald Trump. He has been to Britain for this kind of state visit received by the King and the Queen, but now they are traveling here to the United States. And the timing, most importantly, has to do with the 250th anniversary of America’s independence. 

Now, don’t you know that’s a slightly sensitive issue? King Charles and Queen Camilla have arrived. And one of the big intentions behind this, certainly from the British side, is that better relations be established with the United States and with President Trump. There have been some huge political disagreements. Of course, when you’re talking about the US and the UK, you’re talking about what has long been described as a special relationship, but it’s at times been not only special in such a way that was claimed by figures such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, classically by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and also classically by Winston Churchill, in which they spoke of the unity of the Anglosphere, of the English-speaking peoples, a shared heritage, and that’s very much to be celebrated. And that’s, of course, a part of this state visit by Britain’s King and Queen, but there are also awkward moments. And the awkward moments go all the way back to America’s rebellion, revolution, and you use different words depending on which side of the Atlantic is telling the story.

Okay so now it’s really interesting that Americans just assume we’ve always been the kind of country, let bygones be bygones. Let’s have the British King and Queen come and make a royal visit. Well, the thing is, that didn’t happen from 1776 until 1939. So most who are listening to The Briefing, remember, Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reign in British history, it was her father, King George VI, and her mother, the Queen Consort Elizabeth, who came to the United States in the context of what was a looming World War. They came in June of 1939, and it was the first visit of a crowned head from the United Kingdom from Britain. It was the first British King to set foot on American soil, ever. But let’s just say that the reason for the delay had a great deal to do with the fact that we were separated by a revolutionary war. Okay. We fought for our American independence and King George III reluctantly accepted the reality of that independence.

Now, relations between the United States and Britain were pretty rocky from that point on. Let’s just remember that we also have the War of 1812, in which British troops actually went into Washington, D.C., and burned the White House. Let’s just say it takes a while to get over that for a memory. So the British have their memories, including what they see as a revolt or a rebellion. And then the Americans have our memories.

When did things start to change? When was there a thaw in the relationship? Well, at least in part, it has to do with the development of diplomatic niceties between the new nation, the United States of America, and the old nation, Great Britain. So even in the lifetimes of the American revolutionaries and Britain’s King George III, there was an exchange of formalities, even to the point that the King recognized the United States of America in terms of diplomatic recognition.

And I want to say, that was a big act. That was a very big act. It was undertaken by a much stronger nation with an empire then Britain, and a much weaker nation, but of course, very much surging in power, what became known as the United States of America. It was during the mid-19th century that Americans began to redevelop some affection for the British royal family and for Britain. For one thing, you had the development of a certain kind of Anglophilia, that is to say, the love of things British. 

And there was not a civilizational break between the United States and Britain. It wasn’t a civilizational break. Unlike the French Revolution, you could argue that the American Revolution was actually a way of reforming and perpetuating the British model right down to even some of the issues of our Constitution. There was certainly no break in the fundamental culture. We still were drinking English tea.

During the very long reign of Queen Victoria, you had some of these developments come about. For example, you had British royal admiration for a figure such as President Abraham Lincoln. Britain was also between a rock and a hard place, politically speaking, because even though Britain wanted to maintain trade and economic exchange with the South, the Confederacy, they also had to recognize that they did not want to be at war with the United States, that is the North. And so Britain was in a very tough position, and the British people were very much reassured after the Civil War, when the United States emerged once again as the United States of America, intact and quite eager to move forward.

The ties between the United States and Great Britain continued to grow, even as some were seeing that the British Empire, which seemed to be the most powerful political fact on earth, was going eventually to be challenged by the United States of America. The question is, would it be an enemy development or would it be a successor development?

One of the most interesting arguments here was made by Winston Churchill, who of course began his political career under Queen Victoria and ended his political career under Queen Elizabeth II. So you’re talking about an incredibly long political pattern. One of the things that Churchill saw even in the early point of the 20th century was that Britain was going to have to look to the United States as a successor power that would continue the civilizational project. That’s why he wrote a history of the peoples he called the English-speaking peoples saying, “We share a history together.” And of course, as he said, he shares it in his person with an aristocratic British father and an American mother.

And of course, it was with the threat of World War II looming that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to the United States in 1939. It was huge. In June of 1939, for the King of England to show up in the United States of America, recognizing the United States, needing the United States, his visit indicating a complete restored relationship between Great Britain and the United States. It was absolutely huge. 

It wasn’t without miscues. Very interesting historical accounts of what happened, for instance, in a formal event held at the British embassy, the British authorities really weren’t sure exactly who to invite, who not to invite. There was a limited invitation list, and let’s just say it didn’t include even all members of the United States Senate. And here’s the big political thing. It didn’t include any of their wives at the time. And there was an uproar. And once again, you had an American rebellion over tea at the British embassy. It was all smoothed over.

Of course, the United States and Great Britain grew so close to one another in the horrible conflict known as World War II and continued to be the closest of allies with what was described as a special relationship throughout the Cold War and even into the present. And now you have some strains in the present relationship. And that’s one of the reasons why King Charles II has come from Britain to the United States on a state visit. And on a state visit like this, a lot of things are going to be ceremonial. A lot of things are going to be formal. The King does not officially conduct foreign policy. He does have a great deal to do with foreign relations. And so you can count on the relationship part being built up as much as possible by this royal visit.

USA Today says that King Charles, who after all is also suffering from prostate cancer, came into his role and reign after his mother’s extraordinarily long life. And so he was a rather old man by the time he became King, but he does represent a form of old world charm that President Donald Trump clearly admires. And so as USA Today says, “Charles is Here on a Charm Offensive.” Subhead in the article says, “King’s Trip Offers Chance to Heal US-Britain Rift.” Well, it’s not at all clear at this point how big that rift is, but it isn’t insignificant that under these circumstances, even with recent security concerns made clear by what happened in Washington, D.C., Saturday night, the King and the Queen are pressing on, and they arrived yesterday in Washington, D.C.

I should note that Charles came as the Prince of Wales on an official visit in 1970. That’s when Richard Nixon was President of the United States. But he came on an official visit as the heir to the British throne. Now he is coming on a state visit because he who would be King now is the King. In this case, the difference between being a prince and a king is just about everything.

One final thought here from a Christian perspective, a lot of this is sheer formality. When you’re talking about a state visit by the king of England, you’re talking about incredible formality, the kind of formality that doesn’t come naturally to Americans, but sometimes in a time of stress, I think it’s important for us to recognize formality comes as a friend, not a foe. Just given how human nature operates, I think Christians understand that at an even more fundamental level.

We’ll be following these things with you.