White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is feeling the heat after yet another gunman came within feet of the president of the United States.
Wiles, 68, was not in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, where a gunman exchanged shots with Secret Service. But some critics are pointing to Wiles—who oversees the Secret Service in her role—for security lapses that put Donald Trump and top administration officials at risk.
A former administration official told RealClear Politics that Wiles, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, is to blame, after allowing Secret Service Director Sean Curran to remain in his position despite “numerous failures.”
“They’re about to fire Kash, and he had nothing to do with this,” the source told the outlet, referencing reports that Trump is considering ousting FBI Director Kash Patel.
“Susie oversees the Secret Service, and it’s failure after failure after failure, and she gets no blame,” the source added.
Others, however, have said that it wasn’t Wiles, but Trump’s own sons who advocated for Curran, who was sworn in on the president’s second inauguration, to land the top job.
“The guy [Trump] is going to get killed, and everyone will keep their jobs,” the former official told the outlet.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast that the president “continues to have confidence in the United States Secret Service and all of his top law enforcement personnel, as the president mentioned last night.”
“These brave men and women took swift action and quickly neutralized the perpetrator who sought to seek harm to the president and other top officials,“ Ingle continued.
Curran was one of the agents assigned to Trump’s detail on July 13, 2024, when critical security lapses allowed a would-be assassin to open fire on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, killed one person, severely injured two others, and left the president’s ear bloodied.
The incident, Curran has said, led the agency to take “many steps to ensure such an event can never be repeated in the future.”
Yet in the hours after a gunman stormed the Washington Hilton on Saturday, attendees are calling out a “security fiasco” at the annual event.
“To get down from my room to the dinner, I simply flashed my ticket. It could have been a photocopy,” wrote Daily Beast Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty, who was present when the chaos unfolded. “The only time I went past a checkpoint was at the same magnetometers that Cole Allen, 31, sprinted past with his gun.”
Curran, whose career in law enforcement has spanned more than two decades, defended the security setup at the venue, pointing to the apprehension of the gunman as proof that “our multilayered protection works.”
The gunman attempted to storm the ballroom where Trump had been seated at the dais alongside Melania. Five to eight shots were fired, CBS reported, as Trump, Vance, and several Cabinet officials were escorted out. Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that officials believe the suspect, identified by reports as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, was “targeting administration officials.”
Jeff Carroll, interim chief of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, said the suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives. Allen will be charged with one count each of using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon.
The White House, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment, has used the security lapse to push for Trump’s highly contested $400 million White House ballroom project.
“Nothing should be allowed to interfere with with its construction, which is on budget and substantially ahead of schedule!!!” Trump wrote on Sunday in a Truth Social post.
“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” he wrote. “It cannot be built fast enough! While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World, The White House.”
