The evidence against would-be presidential assassin Cole Tomas Allen is overwhelming. Dozens of people saw him run through the Washington Hilton hotel — armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and six knives — toward the ballroom where Donald Trump was about to address the White House Correspondents’ Association. Prosecutors allege he fired a shot that hit and wounded a Secret Service officer. His mad dash was captured on surveillance video from every conceivable angle, and he was caught at the scene. He confessed, in writing and with specificity, in an email to friends and family.

It’s a case prosecutors cannot conceivably botch — but Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro are trying their best to screw it up. The problem is both Blanche and Pirro have stubbornly refused to recuse themselves from the case, notwithstanding their status as witnesses and intended victims. In the process, they have given Allen a sliver of a chance.

At a hearing this week, U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, a 2017 Trump appointee, twisted logic and common sense to suggest Blanche and Pirro might not be witnesses because Allen never made it into the ballroom and they didn’t see anything. But they did see something of relevance — the reaction of Secret Service and other security personnel inside the room — and they certainly heard gunshots outside. A person doesn’t necessarily have to see anything to qualify as a witness. Consider, for example, an apartment dweller who hears gunshots and screams through the wall of an adjacent apartment and calls the police. That Good Samaritan neighbor is certainly a witness, even without physically seeing anything.

Judge McFadden also voiced skepticism about Blanche’s and Pirro’s status as victims: “I’d be very surprised if they were victims in any legal sense.” Tell that to Pirro herself, who said to Fox News on May 2, “I was........

© Daily Intelligencer