An attendee staying at the Washington Hilton is raising serious questions about security at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner after a suspect allegedly opened fire outside the high-profile gathering attended by Donald Trump on Saturday.
Daily Beast editor Hugh Dougherty said what he witnessed in the hours leading up to the incident could help explain how the suspect, identified as Cole Allen, may have been able to move undetected while carrying a disassembled long gun.
“How on earth could someone with a disassembled long gun check into a room at a hotel where the president was going to speak? I can answer that: Nobody even looked at my luggage on Friday afternoon,” he said, adding that his colleague’s belongings also went unchecked as late as 5 p.m. Saturday.
“No magnometers, no hand checks, no I.D. checks. Nothing.”
Dougherty said he was able to move freely between the hotel’s ground floor and his room on the 10th floor without being stopped, screened, or asked to show credentials — a lapse that raises concerns about how someone could navigate the building ahead of the event.
“To get down from my room to the dinner, I simply flashed my ticket,” Dougherty said. “It could have been a photocopy.”
He also said he shared a copy of a colleague’s ticket to help them gain access inside the hotel up to the magnetometers, the same checkpoints Allen allegedly rushed past before being tackled by security outside the dinner venue.
Speaker Mike Johnson also echoed security concerns on Fox News.
“I can tell you from a layman’s perspective, it did look a little lax in terms of, as everyone’s now noted, getting into the building,” Johnson said. “Now, we all came in — Cabinet secretaries of government officials with their own details — we come in the back, so I didn’t see the magnetometers and all that, but it doesn’t sound like it was sufficient.”
Johnson said, “This can’t go on,” after three attempts on Trump’s life.
“He’s the most attacked, maligned political figure in history,” Johnson said. “He’s very resilient, but he needs greater protection. And I think there’s going to be a reevaluation, a very close reevaluation of how we handle these large events.”
The reported gaps in screening are likely to face intense scrutiny as officials review how security was handled at one of Washington’s most prominent annual events, particularly with the president in attendance.
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