By Jack Phillips
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will hold a meeting with the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security to review security protocols in the wake of a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend, a senior White House official confirmed on Monday.
The official told The Epoch Times that the Trump administration is “standing by the leadership of the Secret Service” and that President Donald Trump believes the agency “did an excellent job” in preventing the shooting suspect from taking further action in the incident at the Hilton Washington hotel in the District of Columbia on Saturday evening.
Wiles will be “convening a meeting early this week with the White House operations team,” Homeland Security officials, and the Secret Service to “discuss protocol and practices for major events” with Trump, the senior official said.
“The meeting will discuss the processes and procedures that worked to stop Saturday’s attempt, while exploring additional options to ensure all relevant components are doing everything possible to secure the many major events planned for President Trump in the months ahead as he gears up to celebrate America 250,” the official continued to say.
A White House official confirmed to The Epoch Times on Sunday that authorities identified the suspect as Cole Allen of Torrance, California. Allen allegedly wrote a manifesto indicating that he may have wanted to target Trump and also expressed anti-Christian views, the official said.
Allen is expected to be charged with multiple federal counts on Monday, said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in an interview on Sunday.
Kari Lake, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona and Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, expressed concerns about not having to show a photo ID to match her ticket to the event when entering the hotel for the correspondents’ dinner.
“I can’t believe how lax the security was,” Lake wrote on X, adding, “All one had to do was flash what appeared to be a ticket and they were fine with that.”
After shots were fired on Saturday, Secret Service agents surrounded Trump and whisked him away, according to video footage of the event. Another team moved Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials and their families quickly out of the room.
Trump has repeatedly praised the Secret Service and his detail, and he has pushed the correspondents’ association to reschedule the dinner. He said it would have “even more security.”
“And they’ll have bigger perimeter security,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”
“I probably made them act a little bit more slowly. I said: ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Lemme see. Wait a minute,’” Trump told the outlet, adding that as he started walking out, “They said, ‘Please go down. Please go down on the floor.′ So I went down, and the first lady went down also.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
