President Obama maintains “full confidence” in the Secret Service to protect him and his family despite the incident of an intruder last Friday scaling the fence outside the White House, sprinting across the lawn and entering the building before he was stopped.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that an internal Secret Service review of the incident and its causes are well underway.
President Obama met Thursday night with Secret Service Director Julia Pierson about her initial assessment of why and how the incident occurred.
“The president does have full confidence in the Secret Service to make those assessments,” Earnest said, referring more detailed questions about the review to the Secret Service.
The Secret Service bolstered security outside the White House Monday after the intruder incident just three days before prompted a rare evacuation of the White House Friday evening.
The accused intruder, 42-year-old Army veteran Omar J. Gonzales, who was carrying a small knife at the time he was detained, appeared in court Monday. Prosecutors said he had been arrested earlier this summer in Virginia with a car filled with weapons and a map with the White House and the Masonic Temple in Alexandria circled.
In a separate incident later, authorities also found more than 800 rounds of ammunition in Gonzales’ car.
Less than 24 hours after Gonzeles’ arrest, a second man was taken into custody after he drove up to a White House gate and refused to leave. Bomb technicians descended on the vehicle and other Secret Service agents shut down nearby streets.
Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary on Sunday identified the man as Kevin Carr, 19, of Shamong, N.J.
