In the United States District Court
For the Southern District of New York
DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION,
UNITED STATES MARSHAL FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK,
(Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241)
This Court possesses subject matter jurisdiction to hear this petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241(a) and 28 U.S.C. § 2242. The underlying kinetic incident of April 25, 2026, occurred in Washington, D.C., where Detainee Cole Tomas Allen was initially apprehended. However, the national security apparatus has subsequently placed the Detainee in extrajudicial, incommunicado isolation, actively concealing his exact physical location from his family, legal counsel, and the public. While the immediate custodian rule established in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004), typically requires filing in the district of confinement, the Supreme Court recognizes exceptions when the Government frustrates this rule by hiding the prisoner. Because the Respondents are actively concealing the Detainee's physical location, the Petitioner files this writ in the Southern District of New York against the ultimate custodians—the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI—to compel them to disclose the Detainee's whereabouts and answer for his unconstitutional deprivation of liberty.
Petitioner Joaquim Pedro de Morais respectfully appears before this Honorable Court to invoke the Great Writ as Next Friend to Detainee Cole Tomas Allen, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2242. While Petitioner acknowledges the strict Article III standing requirements delineated by the Supreme Court in Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149 (1990), this intervention is necessitated by an unprecedented constitutional crisis and the total communicative blackout imposed upon the Detainee.
Following the security incident at the Washington Hilton, the national security apparatus placed Detainee Allen in extrajudicial, tactical isolation. This draconian lockdown renders the Detainee utterly inaccessible to independent legal counsel, medical professionals, and the courts. This absolute deprivation of liberty and communication physically and legally incapacitates Mr. Allen from prosecuting this petition pro se, thereby strictly satisfying the first, "inaccessibility" prong of the Whitmore doctrine. Petitioner asserts a genuine, compelling dedication to the Detainee's best interests, which are being actively subverted by a government apparatus operating outside ordinary constitutional guardrails.
Crucially, the constitutional validity of detaining Mr. Allen under a punitive, maximum-security counter-terrorism framework is fatally undermined by the extraordinary public declarations of the alleged victim—the Chief Executive of the United States. Following the incident, the President bypassed the judicial process and leveraged both a White House press briefing and a nationally televised 60 Minutes broadcast to officially diagnose the Detainee's mental state. By repeatedly and categorically defining Mr. Allen as a "very sick person," a "whack job," and describing a psychotic break wherein he devolved into an "anti-Christian" consumed by hatred, the Executive Branch has functionally conceded that the Detainee suffers from severe psychiatric pathology.
Holding a severely incapacitated individual in punitive, incommunicado isolation—without immediate, independent psychiatric evaluation to determine his competence under the standards of Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402 (1960)—constitutes a gross violation of the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause. The government cannot classify a subject as a sane, calculating domestic terrorist while its own Commander-in-Chief broadcasts his clinical insanity to the world.
Furthermore, the Chief Executive openly admitted to the systemic causal nexus of the event, stating: "When you're impactful, they go after you. When you're not impactful, they leave you alone." This startling concession of rhetorical incitement—acknowledging that the Executive's own bellicose posture acts as a proximate trigger for radicalized reactions—necessitates immediate judicial intervention. It shifts the legal paradigm from an autonomous criminal act to a constitutionally impermissible State-Created Danger, wherein the State cannot indefinitely suspend the constitutional rights of a citizen whose mental collapse it claims to have provoked.
On April 25, 2026, Detainee Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old Caltech-educated mechanical engineer and former NASA research fellow, was detained following an incident at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Prior to this date, Mr. Allen possessed an impeccable civilian record, devoid of any criminal history, and was a highly functional member of society recognized as a "Teacher of the Month" (2024). His sudden deviation from a productive civilian life was accompanied by a bizarre manifesto—signed as the "Friendly Federal Assassin"—which inherently signals a severe, abrupt psychological fracture rather than standard criminal intent.
In the immediate aftermath, rather than deferring to ongoing investigative or psychiatric clinical assessments, the alleged victim—President Donald Trump—utilized the official apparatus of the Executive Branch to broadcast binding evidentiary and diagnostic statements. These declarations were made initially during a White House press briefing, and subsequently amplified on a nationally televised 60 Minutes broadcast anchored by Norah O'Donnell.
During these public addresses, the President fundamentally altered the legal characterization of the event. Instead of treating the incident strictly as an isolated criminal act, the Chief Executive explicitly framed the Detainee's actions as a natural, expected byproduct of the Executive's own political rhetoric. The President stated categorically: "When you're impactful, they go after you." In doing so, the head of the prosecuting authority publicly conceded a direct nexus of causality between his administration's socio-political posture and the radicalized reaction of the Detainee, functionally admitting to rhetorical incitement.
Most critically, the President unilaterally and publicly diagnosed the Detainee's mental state. Bypassing clinical protocols, the Commander-in-Chief repeatedly classified Mr. Allen as a "very sick person" and a "whack job." From a constitutional standpoint, these constitute an official, public assessment by the Chief Executive that the Detainee suffers from severe psychiatric pathology. Consequently, the Executive Branch has formally laid the prima facie factual foundation for a competency evaluation under 18 U.S.C. § 4241, rendering the Detainee's continued tactical isolation legally indefensible and medically unconstitutional.
10. Under the State-Created Danger exception to the Due Process Clause (arising from DeShaney v. Winnebago County DSS, 489 U.S. 189 (1989)), federal courts recognize that the State may be held constitutionally liable when its affirmative conduct places an individual in danger or strips them of their ability to act rationally. Here, the alleged victim—who now commands the prosecuting authority—actively utilized the presidential pulpit to foster a hyper-polarized environment, explicitly normalizing violence as a metric of political success.
11. By publicly declaring that being "impactful" naturally draws lethal kinetic responses, the Executive Branch makes a profound legal concession of proximate causation. The government admits that its vitriolic rhetoric predictably and foreseeably triggers psychological radicalization. To detain Mr. Allen indefinitely as an autonomous "lone wolf" terrorist deliberately ignores the State's confessed role as an active agent provocateur.
12. The Fifth Amendment strictly prohibits the criminal prosecution and punitive detention of individuals suffering from severe mental disease who cannot understand the nature of the proceedings against them (Dusky v. United States). The President has officially characterized the Detainee as a "very sick person" experiencing an "anti-Christian" psychotic break. This creates an immediate, legally binding bona fide doubt regarding the Detainee's competence.
13. Holding a severely mentally ill individual in maximum-security isolation—rather than immediately remanding him for independent psychiatric evaluation under 18 U.S.C. § 4241—constitutes a deprivation of liberty without due process of law. Furthermore, subjecting an individual recognized by the State as clinically insane to black-site interrogation tactics borders on cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
14. The government currently seeks to weaponize national security protocols to hold Detainee Allen extrajudicially; however, this veil of secrecy serves to shield the State’s own gross operational negligence. As Detainee Allen highlighted, the security apparatus at the Washington Hilton was "absolutely insane," willfully lacking basic magnetometers. The government effectively established an entrapment-like environment. The Executive Branch cannot benefit from its own gross negligence (nemo auditur propriam turpitudinem allegans) to justify indefinite isolation, especially when such isolation prevents the Detainee from exposing these failures in an Article III court.
Given the unprecedented constitutional crisis and the inviolability of the Suspension Clause (U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2), Petitioner respectfully requests that this Honorable Court exercise its equitable and statutory powers to:
- Issue a Writ of Habeas Corpus or an Immediate Order to Show Cause: Compel the Respondents to formally justify the constitutional and statutory basis of Mr. Allen's current extrajudicial detention within twenty-four (24) hours, expressly precluding any invocation of national security privilege to bypass Article III judicial review;
- Order Immediate Medical Remand Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4241: Mandate the immediate transfer of Cole Tomas Allen from punitive tactical isolation to a secure, independent federal medical facility for a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation, enforcing the consequences of the Executive Branch's public assessment of his mental incapacity;
- Compel Unfettered Access to Counsel and Medical Professionals: Issue an injunction granting immediate, unmonitored access to independent defense counsel and psychiatric experts;
- Order the Preservation of Exculpatory Evidence (Brady / Trombetta): Issue a strict protective order enjoining the Respondents from destroying evidence concerning the gross security failures in D.C., as well as all raw audiovisual recordings of the President's public diagnoses (including the 60 Minutes broadcast), which constitute essential prima facie evidence;
- Declare the Preclusion of Indefinite Military-Style Detention: Issue a declaratory judgment stating that the Executive's public admission of its role as the proximate rhetorical cause of the Detainee's psychological break categorically precludes indefinite, uncharged military-style detention (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004));
- Mandate Immediate Conditional Release in the Alternative: Should the Respondents fail to formally indict the Detainee or initiate lawful civil commitment proceedings, mandate immediate conditional release under the Bail Reform Act (18 U.S.C. § 3142);
- Grant General Relief: Award such other and further relief as the Court may deem just, equitable, and proper under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Joaquim Pedro de Morais
Petitioner / Next Friend
Dated: April 28, 2026
