New video of Correspondents' Dinner shooting raises questions about presidential security

The Justice Department released high-resolution video showing the moment an armed man stormed

past security at the White House correspondence dinner.

The incident is raising serious questions about the security posture surrounding the

president at high-profile public events.

We're joined now by Juliet Kayem of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard's Kennedy School.

She previously served as Assistant DHS Secretary in the Obama Administration, July 8th.

It's great to see you.

So look, there are lots of questions, as you know, about the shot that struck the U.S. Secret Service

agent.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Janine Piro says there's no evidence of

friendly fire.

But the video, this single video, is not definitive.

What does this footage show us and what does it not show us?

So it shows us, it shows the suspect going through a security metal detector essentially.

It also shows some speeding up.

It shows him trying to reach a gun.

And then the frame by frame shows some dust, sort of a dust up, literally up above, which

would suggest that there had been a gun fired, because afterwards you then see the secret

service pick up their guns.

So the prosecutors will say this shows that he had deadly intent and that the secret service

were responding.

But I will be honest with you, the frame by frame is not dispositive in any way.

What the government released was on different speeds, it sort of slowed down and sped up.

So a good defense attorney is going to wonder why that is happening.

What you also don't see is you don't see any movement, like a sort of a muzzle from his

gun, go off.

So it's a long way of saying lawyers are going to debate this in court.

It's certainly not definitive.

The more important thing is why is, I don't quite understand why the government is sort

of going for broke on this issue.

Friendly fire is known to happen.

It's not like a moral outrage.

It happens when bad people come with guns, two areas with police presence.

And so I don't quite know why the administration is so stuck on this issue.

Even if they're were friendly fire, they're still intent to kill the president by the assassin.

Well, on that point, the secret service director, Sean Kern, in defending his agents, says

the site was set up perfectly.

The video, this is about a half hour into the dinner.

The video shows the agents, some of them removing the magnetometers.

And the suspect appears to exploit that exact moment.

He's got that running start as he sort of barrels through.

Is that what a perfect setup looks like?

I would never say perfect ever.

And I would certainly not say it after there was an attempt at assassination attack only

because the truth is the director of current, if you said to him, you have to do this again

next year.

He wouldn't in no way do it the same way.

We all know that there were vulnerabilities.

So in the secret services defense, in other words, where do I look for the highlights of

this planning?

They had a secure zone.

That secure zone was never breached.

And the president was truly not under any direct threat.

They got him out of there in time.

So if you look at from the perspective of the security zone, nothing bad ever happened.

Of course, the shooting and all the badness outside the secure zone, of course, impacts

everyone.

And so I think the question for director Curran is sort of both what we call the mixed

environment, the public and private at a hotel like this.

Do you really want to have those for president Trump or any president?

And also, at some stage, the secure zone may need to be extended further because of the

nature of gun violence and political violence in this country.

Well, say more about that because this is now the third attempted attack on president

Trump.

So from a protection standpoint, does that fundamentally change the model?

It probably does in one way, which is you're just going to be more conscious and do a lot

more planning for the president's non-home sort of when he gets out of the house, out

of the White House.

And the reason why I say that is because I look at these three assassination attempts.

One happens in a open air political rally.

The second happens at a private golf course.

And the third in the basement of a hotel.

So anytime he's going to get out, there's going to be vulnerabilities.

Now, the White House has been saying that means he needs more protection or a ballroom

at the White House.

That's not how it works in between a White House that no one's invited to.

And the fact we have a democracy where you want your president to engage with people and

not just the people around him, but you want presidents to engage the public.

There's a lot more that we can do security-wise in particular, maybe extending that security

zone.

But almost every planner I've talked to since last week and just don't have it in the

hotel.

In the convention center in DC, secure the area around the convention center.

You won't have residents and you won't have a public.

It's not rocket science, actually.

You mentioned the president talking up his ballroom, his desired ballroom.

Do you think the administration is treating this primarily as a security failure to fix

or as a political moment to message around?

I mean, I was thinking about the past week.

I take presidential assassinations seriously as we all should.

And I sort of think about the line of the story since last Saturday, which is, you know,

it's very scary for a democracy to have people and people with whatever motives.

But in this case, you know, left wing motives to go after a president.

So you have a discussion of a ballroom.

You have going after Komi, the FBI director.

And then you have going after a late night host for what he said about the president.

None of those are related to the president's safety and security.

And I think the White House might make all of us take security more seriously if they

did not politicize it within hours of an assassination attempt against the president of the United

States.

Julia at Cuyam.

Julia, thanks as always.

Thank you.