Shooter’s path to White House press gala prompts security questions
WASHINGTON — An attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner by a gunman who came within feet of the ballroom where President Trump sat raised immediate questions about the night’s security protocol — and the future of large, high-profile events in a country with easy access to firearms and increasingly high political tensions.
The man breached metal detectors in front of the Washington Hilton ballroom and sprinted dozens of feet ahead before exchanging fire with federal agents. Shots were fired in an anteroom that had not an hour before seen thousands of guests, including senior government officials, streaming through.
A manifesto allegedly written by the suspect described his targets as members of the Trump administration, ranking from the highest to the lowest — but said he was willing to “go through” any guest standing in his way in order to kill the president’s aides.
The attempted attack on a room full of dignitaries underscored domestic unrest in Trump’s second term and deepened questions about how to effectively create security in a modern era of lone actors, online radicalization and mass shootings. It was the third known time an attempted assassin has come close to Trump since his 2024 presidential campaign began.
Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday called the U.S. Secret Service response a “massive security success story.” But within hours of the incident, bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee demanded a hearing on the agency’s security plans for the dinner.
In the manifesto sent to his family, the alleged gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, marveled at a lack of security.
“No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event,” he wrote. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
The Hilton, in a ritzy Washington neighborhood, has long hosted the White House correspondents’ dinner. It is the same hotel where President Reagan and three others were shot in 1981.
The shooting caused terror among guests, some of whom noted they had expected more security to enter the event and Trump was whisked offstage within the first minute of shots being fired. While the event has traditionally hosted sitting presidents in the past, Trump’s decision this year to appear for the first time since taking office made the event particularly high profile.
His presence, alongside Vice President JD Vance and much of the Cabinet and line of succession, brought with it added security protocols and personnel — raising questions over whether the storied dinner and its guests of congressional members, diplomats and mid-level officials would have been even more susceptible to attack without Trump in attendance.
Trump on Sunday said it is “tough” to secure a hotel in the middle of a city with “buildings all around and hotel rooms on top,” but praised the Secret Service and law enforcement officers. One officer was shot, not fatally.
Talking to reporters after the incident Saturday night, Trump swiftly likened it to the attempt on his life by a gunman in Butler, Pa., during the 2024 presidential campaign, and suggested that it justified his controversial plans to construct a fortified ballroom on the White House grounds. He called the hotel “not a particularly secure building,” though he later said the room was “very, very secure.”
Plans to reschedule the dinner are under review. White House Correspondents’ Assn. President Wiejia Jiang of CBS News said the organization’s board would meet to assess what had happened.
Blanche said Sunday an investigation into what had happened was ongoing. He had attended a reception before the dinner on the first floor of the hotel hosted by CBS News, one of many that did not require any security check by law enforcement authorities.
“The first takeaway, or the takeaway that should be obvious, is that the system worked. And that we stopped the suspect, and we stopped him as soon as he tried to do what he was trying to do,” Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But the attack raises a question about whether presidential security protocols are effective for modern tactics, or whether the country is “in a new domain” in which those procedures no longer meet the nature of the possible threats, said Neil Shortland, director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Federal investigators should examine what the security policies were, what type of attacks they were designed to prevent, and whether that protocol was out of date, Shortland said.
“Did you follow the policy is a great question,” he said. “Was the policy correct in this modern day and for this modern situation is a separate question.”
The country is facing “the most complex threat environment in our nation’s history,” particularly from lone actors who are often radicalized online, Sam Vinograd, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“It can be true that law enforcement and intelligence professionals prepared exhaustively for last night,” she said Sunday. “But it can also be true that in this moment, in this security environment, the paradigms of the past may not be sufficient to meet the moment.”
That raises the “need to rethink what it is going to take to actually secure these mass gatherings,” she said.
Trump appeared to voice the same idea Saturday evening, telling reporters, “Today, we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.” He went on to say that “this is why we have to have” the East Wing ballroom, which he described as drone-proof and having bulletproof glass.
Kris Brown, president of the gun control organization Brady — which is named after Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was shot in the 1981 attack — said lawmakers should instead consider passing legislation to help prevent gun violence.
“Not every public event can take place in the ballroom, in that kind of protection — nor can we afford to live in a society where our solution to gun violence is to barricade our public officials, our children, away in fortresses,” Brown said.
About 2,000 journalists, dignitaries and other guests attended the event, rushing through rain to enter using multiple hotel entrances. They were asked to show their tickets as they walked past security guards, but there was no check-in procedure or ID check. A Times reporter was waved toward the entrance without showing a ticket as she tried to get it out of her purse.
Inside, guests milled about on multiple levels where pre-dinner receptions were occurring. Hotel guests mingled with the crowd, granted full access to the hotel’s amenities, including its boutiques and restaurants.
Two protesters briefly took over a small red carpet where guests were lined up to take professional photos; Times reporters saw a third woman dressed in a formal gown and shouting protest slogans being escorted out by security guards after apparently having entered the event.
Guests were required to flash their tickets to go down an escalator to the ballroom level, then present the ticket before walking through metal detectors and having bags searched ahead of the ballroom entrance.
Allen, who had reserved a room as a hotel guest, said in his manifesto obtained by the New York Post that security was far less stringent than he had expected. Two U.S. officials told The Times that the contents of the manifesto are authentic.
“I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing,” he wrote.
He noted that security guards appeared to be focused on protesters and arrivals outside, writing, “apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”
It is possible that steps to further restrict access to the ballroom level, keep guests away from the event location and check attendees’ identities outside could have provided additional security, said Erin Kearns, director of law enforcement partnerships at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center.
“The lesson that can be taken away is just thinking about how to harden and strengthen security at future events when you have so many high-profile people,” she said.
The hotel was a “soft target” with a makeshift perimeter, and there were “almost zero intervention points” where the shooter could have been apprehended before arriving, Shortland said. That was partly because he traveled by train, which does not have security screenings.
Authorities should also examine whether Allen was known to authorities and, if so, whether intelligence operatives could have pieced together his train travel and arrival in the president’s orbit, Shortland said.
The attempted shooting added to a growing list of instances of political violence in the United States. Last year, one Minnesota state legislator and her spouse were killed by a gunman while another lawmaker and his wife survived; the conservative activist Charlie Kirk — whose wife, Erika, was in attendance Saturday — was shot and killed at a speaking event; an arsonist attacked the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Some of that violence has been directed toward Trump, something he frequently talks about. He was injured in the Butler incident, but has used his survival to argue that God saved him so he could become president. Two months later, a Secret Service agent shot at a gunman pointing a rifle on Trump’s golf course as the president golfed.
On Feb. 22, an armed man was shot and killed after entering the secure perimeter around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, when the president was in Washington.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. It’s happened to me a little bit,” Trump said Saturday.
