A woman with a gun was arrested Thursday night outside of the White House, officials said, just minutes after the President delivered his speech on sweeping immigration changes he’ll make by executive order.
The Secret Service arrested April Lenhart, a 23-year-old Michigan resident, at about 8:30 p.m. on Thursday on Pennsylvania Avenue near the North Lawn of the White House after she was spotted with a gun holstered under her shirt, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said.
The incident occurred as dozens of people were demonstrating outside the White House after the President delivered his immigration speech at 8 p.m.
The people rallying outside the White House were moved off of Pennsylvania Avenue as the arrest was made, Donovan said.
Lenhart was not responding to Secret Service agents’ questions as of 10 p.m. Thursday.
In an incident reminiscent of the recent Secret Service mishaps surrounding President Obama’s security, England’s prime minister David Cameron, got a taste of what Obama is dealing with here in America.
Somehow, Cameron’s protection lapsed, as a jogger ran up to him outside of Leeds Civic Hall and pushed him before finally being stopped by the MPS.
A spokesman said: ‘The Metropolitan Police Service is aware of an incident in Leeds today, Monday, 27 October, involving a 28-year-old man and the Prime Minister as he left the Civic Hall.
‘The man was arrested by local officers and was later de-arrested. The MPS Specialist Protection Command is responsible for the personal protection of the Prime Minister and will now conduct a review of the incident in consultation with West Yorkshire Police.’
Mr Cameron spotted the man running up to him and took a step back and to the left before security noticed and bundled the protester to the floor.
A man posing as a member of Congress made his way backstage at an event the president attended.
According to Bloomberg, the unidentified man said he was a congressmen and was allowed in a secured area where other members of Congress got their pictures taken with the president. The incident happened at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation awards dinner in Washington Sept. 27, according to a White House official.
The unidentified man said he was Representative Donald Payne Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, the official said. One member of the White House staff determined that the man wasn’t Payne, and another asked him to leave, the official said. He did so without incident and wasn’t detained.
The decision to quit was probably the best decision the former director of the Secret Service has made since accepting the job as Secret Service Director. Julia Pierson is finally out!
U.S. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned under fire on Wednesday after a series of security lapses came to light that exposed gaping holes in the protective cocoon around President Barack Obama.
Pierson, in her position for just 18 months, faced mounting calls from lawmakers to step down in the fallout from a Sept. 19 incident in which an Iraq war veteran with a knife scaled the White House fence, sprinted across the lawn and got deep inside the mansion before an off-duty agent stopped him.
Pierson had told a congressional committee on Tuesday she took “full responsibility” for gaps in presidential security. On Wednesday, she offered her resignation in a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who accepted it.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama believed Pierson’s resignation was in the best interest of the agency, and that “recent and accumulating” reports of security lapses led the president to conclude new leadership was required at the Secret Service.
If you can’t do the job, then stop wasting everyone’s time and money, and stop putting the lives of the First Family in your incompetent hands. Over the last few years, our once respected Secret Service Agency has plummeted to something that is now the joke of the town in a very scary way. Something has to change, and that change should start at the top!
“The president is not well-served. … I think this lady has to go – Ms. Pierson,” the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings, reportedly said during a radio interview on NewsOneNow Wednesday, the day after Pierson testified before the committee. “There has to be drastic changes.”
In another interview on MSNBC, he said that he does not “feel comfortable” with her at the head of the agency.
“I have come to the conclusion that my confidence and my trust in this director, Ms. Pierson, has eroded. And I do not feel comfortable with her in that position,” Cummings said.
An aide to Cummings later said that Cummings and Pierson spoke Wednesday morning and he told her “if she can’t restore the public’s trust in the agency – and in particular address the cultural issues so agents feel comfortable raising security concerns to their higher-ups – then of course she should not be in that position.”
“After yesterday’s hearing, and after new revelations last night, the Congressman’s trust is eroding, and he believes there needs to be an independent review of the agency,” the Cummings aide said.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, told reporters Wednesday that she will follow Cummings’ recommendation if he ultimately calls for Pierson’s resignation.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who has been deeply involved in investigating the Secret Service, told Bloomberg News, “The president should fire her or at least she should resign.”
I can understand and accept the first layer of White Hpuse security being breached and maybe on a good day, maybe the second layer as well.
But the third, the fourth and the fifth layers being overcome by one man is not only impossible to even imagine, it shows a negligence by the Secret Service in doing their most basic job – to protect the First Family and the White House.
Just when you think it couldn’t get more ridiculous, more unbelievable, more unacceptable than an man being allowed to jog across the White House lawn and enter the White House with a knife in his pocket, you hear this news – that three days before the White House intruder made his unwanted visit to the White House, the Secret Service once again dropped the ball and allowed a man with a gun to ride an elevator with President Obama.
But wait, it wasn’t just any man with a gun, it was a felon with a gun!!!
I said it before and I’ll say it again. Someone at the Secret Service needs to be fired preferably the head of the Secret Service, Ms. Pierson!
An armed private security agent was allowed on an elevator with President Barack Obamaearlier this month in Atlanta, a Secret Service official said on Tuesday, in another case involving a security failure for the embattled agency.
The incident occurred while Obama was visiting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sept. 16, three days before a man with a knife jumped the White House fence in Washington and ran into the executive mansion.
The White House intrusion has sparked sharp criticism of the agency responsible for protecting the president. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson told a congressional committee on Tuesday: “This is unacceptable and I take full responsibility.”
In the Atlanta incident, first reported by the Washington Examiner and Washington Post, a security contractor with the CDC was operating the elevator carrying Obama and his Secret Service detail.
The man began taking pictures and video of Obama on his phone, prompting the Secret Service to take him aside for questioning after they left the elevator, the agency official said.
It was not until his supervisor appeared and asked for his gun that the Secret Service realize he was armed, the official said. Under agency rules, people with access to the president need special clearance to carry guns.
The Washington Post reported that a background check also showed the man had three previous convictions for assault and battery.
When I first heard and saw the video of this, showing a man casually making his way into the White House, I knew something was ghastly wrong. No one, no matter who they are, should be allowed to run across the White House lawn, jog up the stairs to the North doors and not only entered the building, but run all the way to the East Room. This should not happen and like I said when the initial report came out, Secret Service heads should roll because of this!
The Washington Post is reporting that the man who jumped the White House fence this month and sprinted through the front door made it much farther into the building than previously known, overpowering one Secret Service officer and running through much of the main floor, according to three people familiar with the incident.
An alarm box near the front entrance of the White House designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher’s office, said a Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The officer posted inside the front door appeared to be delayed in learning that the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, was about to burst through. Officers are trained that, upon learning of an intruder on the grounds — often through the alarm boxes posted around the property — they must immediately lock the front door.
After barreling past the guard immediately inside the door, Gonzalez, who was carrying a knife, dashed past the stairway leading a half-flight up to the first family’s living quarters. He then ran into the 80-foot-long East Room, an ornate space often used for receptions or presidential addresses.
Gonzalez was tackled by a counterassault agent at the far southern end of the East Room. The intruder reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn with artwork and antique furniture, according to three people familiar with the incident.
It’s refreshing to know that there are some in Congress who are demanding something be done to make sure the this doesn’t happen again. Peter King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, spoke on Fox News Sunday and called the total lapse by the Secret Service “absolutely inexcusable,” and he suggested a congressional hearing into the breach of security be done.
“This is absolutely inexcusable! This demands a full investigation, an investigation as to what happened, why it happened and what’s being done to make sure it never happens again.”
“He could have had a body bomb; he could have [had] a vest on! There can be a lot of conspiracies against a president, a lot of complex assassination plots. This is the most basic, the most simple type of procedure, and how anyone, especially in these days of ISIS, and we’re concerned about terrorist attacks, someone could actually get into the White House without being stopped is inexcusable.”
Needless to say, I disagree with just about everything Peter King has to say. He’s a Republican, so there. But in this case, I am in agreeance with the man. I am pretty shocked!. That someone can jump the fence and be allowed to go on a Sunday jog casually across the North Lawn, up to the doors of the White House and then enter the building is freaking mind-boggling!
According to the response from the Secret Service, the man wasn’t taken down because he didn’t appear to have a weapon. Huh? So that allows him free passage into the most secure place in the nation?
The man, later identified as 42 year old Omar J. Gonzales from Texas had a knife in his pocket when he entered the doors of the White House. Can you imagine if he was a suicide bomber?
At a recent National Rifle Association (NRA) gathering, aging Rocker Ted Nugent said this about President Obama, “if Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” His statement implies that if President Obama wins re-election in November, he [Ted] will either get killed in an assassination attempt, or end up in jail as a result of such an attempt.
Mr. Nugent is now on the Secret Service’s radar as they look deeper into the meaning of what he said.
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, in a recent interview, expressed his pleasure in ‘getting to know Ted Nugent.”
Romney just took his level of sickness down to new lows!
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