New questions are being raised about how a shooter got so close to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night, causing President Donald Trump and other high-ranking D.C. officials to be evacuated.
Investigators are taking a closer look at the response by law enforcement officials and how it unfolded so close to one of the city’s most tightly secured events. Authorities are also working to build a clearer picture of the accused shooter and the path he took to make his way to D.C.
The president was uninjured in the incident as he was rushed off the stage after shots were heard. The armed man was arrested and is expected to appear in court Monday.
Details released in the case indicate the man was a guest at the Washington Hilton, where the dinner was being held, and that he had traveled by train from California to Chicago before traveling on to the nation’s capital.
WTOP National Security reporter J.J. Green said while D.C. events are heavily secured, the correspondents’ dinner was not on the White House grounds, meaning there could be some outside elements that put events like this one at risk.
“It’s an event that’s outside of that bubble that is the White House grounds,” Green said. “This is a high security area anyway on a daily basis. … It’s not hard to raise the security profile for a place like the Hilton, because there are many, many events that take place there and where the president is.”
He said there are at least three “concentric rings” of security for major events like Saturday night’s that involve the president.
“But there’s always the possibility that someone could show up outside of the outer ring, so to speak, and do something like what we witnessed last night,” Green said.
However, some things, even with tight security, are hard to control.
“The interesting thing about that is, no matter how tight that security is inside those rings, when someone does something like this outside of those rings and approaches the rings, there’s going to be a situation where people simply go, ‘Oh, my God. How did this happen?’ And it makes people wonder about whether or not there was security,” Green said.
Green said the answer to that question is that it absolutely was a highly-secured event.
“There was big, great security. But there’s also what happens outside of that ring that can certainly raise the concern that that’s sort of filtering out across Washington and the world today,” he said.
Who is the accused shooter?
Two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation identified the accused shooter to The Associated Press as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California. Investigators have not publicly named the suspect.
Green said investigators are now looking into the man’s background.
“They’re looking into his writings. They’re looking into his postings, all of his connections, the people he knows, the places he’s gone and anything they can to help them develop a motive,” he said.
And because he showed up to the scene heavily armed with multiple weapons, they’re looking into whether he had been trained for attacking a high-profile event such as Saturday night’s dinner.
“They also want to know about training background and also who he might have been involved with that might have helped him with this kind of activity,” Green said.
What did the shooter have planned?
Green said the investigation will not only include who the shooter was, but also why he was there.
“There’s this question as well that lingers in many people’s minds was the president, was a certain number of people targets or was it a mass casualty-type event?” he said.
Green said one of the fears in the aftermath of the incident is the possibility for “copycat scenarios,” adding that the Secret Service is looking to put a stop to those well in advance by looking at the accused shooter’s motive.
“It’s always important to look at what they’ve learned from it so that they can prevent things, perhaps, like this from happening in the future,” Green said.
The Associated Press and WTOP’s Valerie Bonk contributed to this report.
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