Just minutes before the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, the suspected gunman left a letter for his family where he talked about what he considered a lack of security at the dinner that he hoped to exploit.
There was a security perimeter set up outside the Washington Hilton where you had to show a ticket to get through, but in his letter, the gunman said that he got around that by checking in at the hotel as a guest the night before. Guests of the hotel were free to come and go, and the suspect wrote, "I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat."
He says if he had been an Iranian agent, he could have had much stronger weapons instead of the two guns and knives police say he had on him.
Secret Service tackled the suspect just beyond the metal detectors that he sprinted past. That happened at a set of stairs leading down one level to the floor where the ballroom is located. Doors to the back of the massive room are at the base of the stairs. The president and vice president were sitting on a stage in the front of the room.
RELATED NEWS | Suspect in White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting charged with attempted assassination of Trump
The White House defended the security in place at the dinner.
"Secret Service did their jobs well," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. "They communicated with one another to remove the President and the Vice President to safety as quickly as they could and obviously to neutralize the shooter as well, and thank God they did because if that man was allowed into that ballroom, it would have been a much different scene."
A senior White House official said that the president still has confidence in the leadership at the Secret Service and believes they did an excellent job.
However, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is going to be holding a meeting with DHS and the Secret Service to talk about potential improvements to security procedures and protocols, especially ahead of America's 250th birthday celebrations set to soon take place in the nation's capital.
