Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said law enforcement is investigating how a suspect got a firearm at the site where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was held Saturday.
He said the suspect — who was taken into custody Saturday night after a shootout that left lawmakers, administration officials and journalists on edge — is not cooperating with law enforcement. Neither President Donald Trump nor anyone else attending the dinner was harmed during the shooting, although a Secret Service agent required hospitalization.
“We’re still understanding the security protocols that allowed him to have a firearm in that hotel,” Blanch said during an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Blanch said he expected to have more information about the suspect’s firearms “in the coming days.”
Blanch said that based on a preliminary assessment, law enforcement believed the suspect was targeting administration officials, but did not share further details.
Administration officials, including Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, were immediately evacuated from the venue after gunshots were heard outside the ballroom, and planned events were later cancelled. Trump initially insisted that the show would continue but later said he had been told by law enforcement that the event could not continue as planned. He said the dinner would be rescheduled within 30 days.
Blanch said that by Sunday morning, law enforcement working on the case – which included the FBI, US Secret Service and local authorities – had executed various search warrants, including “recovered devices from the suspect.” He said law enforcement was “actively talking to witnesses who knew him” as authorities investigated the suspect’s motives.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Saturday night that the suspect will be charged in court Monday with assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon and use of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence. Blanch said Sunday that pending the investigation, “there could be a number of federal charges in addition to those two charges.”
suspicious – one who has has been identified By multiple news outlet as a 31 year old California resident Cole Thomas Allen took a train from California to Chicago and then took a train from Chicago to Washington, Blanch said.
Blanch said on CNN that law enforcement believe the suspect entered the Washington Hilton on Friday — the venue that has hosted the annual ceremony for years and where a would-be assassin shot former President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Blanch also said law enforcement understood the suspect shot the U.S. Secret Service officer, who was taken to the hospital after the shooting, but could not say whether the officer had yet been released. Trump said Saturday night that the officer “survived the fact that he was obviously wearing a very good bulletproof vest” and was “doing very well” as of the president’s last conversation with him.
Washington Police Department Interim Chief Jeffrey Carroll said the suspect who attacked the security checkpoint had “a shotgun, a handgun and several knives.”
“Look, in my view this is not about changing the law or making the laws more restrictive regarding firearms ownership,” Blanch said. “He appears to have purchased these firearms over the past few years. We do not know how those firearms got to him in D.C.”
Nevertheless, the acting attorney general was adamant that Saturday night’s outcome was “a huge success story” for law enforcement, though he said law enforcement would make adjustments as needed.
Meanwhile, Trump took to social media Sunday morning to insist that the shooting “would never have happened” in the new White House ballroom he is building to replace the demolished East Wing, adding, “It can’t be built that fast!”
“No one should be allowed to interfere in its construction,” Trump said. Written on Truth SocialCriticizing a lawsuit that is seeking to halt the project until Trump gets congressional approval for the $400 million ballroom. A federal appeals court decided earlier this month that work at the site can continue after a lower court judge ordered the administration to halt construction.
