White House lockdown sees Secret Service rush reporters inside
Agents ushered press standing outside into the briefing room without providing further details at around 11:30 a.m. ET. The Secret Service declared an all-clear order roughly 30 minutes later, allowing reporters back onto the North Lawn. The White House has not provided additional details on what triggered the lockdown, which occurred about an hour before President Trump departed the premises for an event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Department of Education Sec. Linda McMahon was also forced to cut a live interview short and head inside due to the incident. It's the latest in a series of security issues plaguing the Secret Service. In March, a Secret Service agent carried a young boy back to his parents after he breached the White House perimeter.
The young boy slipped through the north fence of the presidential residence before agents quickly swooped the child up and reunited him with his parents, without incident. The latest lockdown occurred just days after the one-year mark of Trump's assassination attempt at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. The tragedy left Trump with a bloody ear, two men with life-altering injuries and father and firefighter Corey Comperatore dead.
There are still scores of questions left unanswered, including why 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot the president-to-be. The president's security arrangements have bolstered in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, and another that followed just two months later at his Florida golf course.
One year on, America is still in the dark and left to wonder how such a brazen attack was so nearly able to kill the most identifiable U.S. politician. Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released on Sunday his final report on the Butler investigation.
Paul's report is full of a 'disturbing pattern of denials, mismanagement, and missed warning signs' from the Senate investigation into the assassination attempt.
'What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, was not just a tragedy—it was a scandal. The United States Secret Service failed to act on credible intelligence, failed to coordinate with local law enforcement, and failed to prevent an attack that nearly took the life of a then-former president,' said Chairman Paul. 'Despite those failures, no one has been fired,' Paul noted.
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