White House press dinner shooting raises questions over security at event

The shooting in the White House correspondents’ gala has prompted questions over security with some asking how a shooter was able to get close to where Donald Trump and many other senior administration officials were gathered and many others praising the actions of law enforcement that swiftly stopped the attack. As details about the shooting at the Washington Hilton continued to surface, the alleged shooter Cole Tomas Allen, 31, mocked an “insane” lack of security at the Washington dinner in a manifesto reportedly send to his family 10 minutes before his assault started. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” the suspect said in the alleged manifesto first obtained by the New York Post, and which expressed hostility to Trump and his administration. Allen, a Caltech-graduate, said “this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again,” he wrote. The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, earlier confirmed to NBC’s Meet the Press that law enforcement believes the suspect was targeting administration officials “likely including the president” based on a preliminary assessment. The attack came less that two years since Trump was the target of an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a subsequent attempt at a golf course in Florida. …