Gunman at White House Correspondents’ Dinner raises questions about event’s security protocol

WASHINGTON —

The suspected gunman who charged past a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday has renewed questions about Secret Service protocols and whether there should be changes to the already tight cordon at the annual star-studded event.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, hailed the response as “a massive security success story.”

He said investigators believe the California man who was arrested, Cole Tomas Allen, intended to attack administration officials at the event, based on his writings that investigators are reviewing.

Blanche later posted on social media a letter the Justice Department filed in a lawsuit that called the Saturday incident an “assassination attempt on President Trump.”

White House officials told CNN that Allen’s family members alerted law enforcement about his possible plans to carry out an attack, but it remains unclear whether the notification happened before or after the incident. His writings, obtained by CNN, included anti-Trump rhetoric.

President Donald Trump’s security detail appears to have responded as trained, immediately covering him, with additional armed agents taking positions overlooking the room to prevent any threats from coming close to the president, according to current and former law enforcement officials experienced in such events.

The incident Saturday follows two previous assassination attempts against Trump — one in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024 and then another two months later at a golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Securing the dinner

While some critics have raised questions about Vice President JD Vance being removed from the dais before the president, the sequence appears to follow the Secret Service procedures, which includes measures that may not be visible.

Video from the Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner takes place, showed the alleged gunman rushing past a group of Secret Service officers who appeared to in a relaxed posture as the event was already underway one floor below.

He was carrying a shotgun, a handgun and knives, according to law enforcement officials, and managed to move quickly to a lobby one floor above where the president sat in the massive ballroom that can hold 2,600 people.

“I don’t think it was a security failure,” Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent and CNN analyst who has helped preparations for the annual dinner. “There are things you can always learn. We’re not going to get a zero-risk environment.”

Another federal law enforcement official raised some concerns about surveillance video images that appear to show the Secret Service agents relaxed and caught off guard as the man races through an area where magnetometer machines were set up to screen guests before they entered the ballroom.

“That shouldn’t have happened that way; he should have been stopped before he got into the lobby area,” the federal law enforcement official said.

The Secret Service routinely conducts a review after incidents like this, Wackrow said, and additional surveillance footage will show a more complete picture that could lead to changes.

There have already been discussions within the administration and the Secret Service about how to handle security for these events in the future, multiple sources told CNN, specifically about whether so many high-ranking administration officials should attend large events together.

Notably, some Secret Service officials have been reluctant to have both the vice president and the president attend events together off the White House grounds. It was not immediately clear what conversations were had ahead of both Trump and Vance attending Saturday’s dinner.

One source directly involved in the planning told CNN the vice president was not originally expected to attend the event, but that changed at the end of last week.

Investigators believe Allen fired at least one round from a shotgun, and agents returned fire, which did not appear to strike him, law enforcement officials said. One U.S. Secret Service officer was shot in their protective vest, investigators say.

Agents who saw Allen running by likely had to consider additional factors as they responded, including that other officers were coming toward them to try to stop him, Wackrow said.

“You can’t just arbitrarily fire your gun,” he said. “There was a lot of discipline in the fact people aren’t just firing. He was subdued very quickly,”

Photos taken by journalists and others at the scene appear to show Allen on the ground and detained in a lobby area near restrooms, before a set of stairs that would have taken him down to the ballroom.

After Cabinet officials were cleared out of the event, some high-profile attendees, including Erika Kirk — the widow of late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last year — were also sought out and escorted out.

Security preparations for the annual event

When a president or other top government officials plan to attend the annual dinner, security preparations begins weeks before. The hotel was the scene of the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, who was shot as he exited a speaking engagement.

For this year’s dinner, the Secret Service visibly increased the protective cordon, helping to manage planned protests and given the increased threats amid the war with Iran.

Allen allegedly traveled by train from his home in California to Washington, D.C., Blanche said, which helped him carry weapons without additional security scrutiny at the airport.

He was also a guest at the Washington Hilton, allowing him to be inside the security bubble that surrounds the event.

The Secret Service at times requires guests and their luggage to be screened before entering a hotel during high-security events, such as for the UN General Assembly. That isn’t typically done for the correspondents dinner.

The Secret Service checked names of hotel guests against a database of people who have arrest warrants or who may otherwise be wanted by law enforcement. Allen wasn’t known to law enforcement, and had not shown up on any threat databases, a federal law enforcement official told CNN. The firearms he bought in 2023 and 2025 were legal purchases, reflecting his lack of criminal history, the official said.

Allen’s choice of shotgun to fire as he ran in the hotel lobby suggests this wasn’t a mission that he expected to survive, the U.S. law enforcement official said.

“This wasn’t an extended firefight mission it doesn’t seem,” the official said.

Blanche told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he is “overly confident that the Secret Service did their job here, not only in the work last night, but in the days coming up to the event.”

“I think that it’s tragic and it’s sad and we’re going to learn from it, but make no mistake about it, the Secret Service did their jobs last night,” the acting attorney general said.