The head of the Secret Service has held a series of private meetings this week with members of Congress defending his agency’s handling of the thwarted attack at Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner, assuring lawmakers that his agency handled the incident well.
So far, the Secret Service’s efforts seem to have headed off the possibility of wide-ranging hearings on Capitol Hill like those that took place after another lone gunman nearly took President Trump’s life in Butler, Pa., two years ago.
But definitive answers about the most recent attack remain elusive, including how the gunman, who possessed little tactical training, managed to breach a secure checkpoint before being subdued and whether an officer was hit by friendly fire.
More broadly, some members of Congress and former agency officials have questioned the wisdom of allowing Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and many other top officials to gather in one place for public events, making the line of presidential succession an easier target for a more organized attack.
The episode has also resurfaced longstanding questions about whether the Secret Service, long bedeviled by staffing shortages and management problems, is equipped to protect Mr. Trump and other top officials at a time of heightened political violence. The assassination attempt in Butler, where a gunman was able to fire his weapon from a nearby rooftop, marked the worst failure by the agency since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 — coincidentally also at the Hilton hotel in Washington where the press gala was held.
The stakes remain high with several high-profile events on the horizon, including the World Cup, the festivities for the nation’s 250th anniversary and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“I don’t want anything left unanswered,” said Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. “Anytime somebody can penetrate the system that close, you really want to know if there’s something we missed.”
Mr. Thompson met with the Secret Service director, Sean Curran, on Wednesday to discuss the attack on the dinner, including the fact that the gunman had gained access to the hotel by booking a room in advance. Mr. Thompson said the director had told him that the agency had provided “about the best security that could have been offered” and also that vetting hotel guests could potentially violate privacy laws. But Mr. Thompson said he would ask his Republican counterpart to hold a hearing examining the incident more closely.
Representative Andrew Garbarino, the New York Republican who heads the Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement that he remained in “active discussions” with the Secret Service about holding a briefing on Capitol Hill but did not say he would seek a public hearing.
Earlier in the week, Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, called for a hearing “to assess the adequacy of presidential security arrangements and resources” and to “review the degree to which post-Butler reforms have been implemented,” according to a letter he sent to Senator Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee. Neither Mr. Hawley nor Mr. Paul responded to requests for comment.
One Democrat who met with Mr. Curran said he believed the response had been successful.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois told reporters on Monday that the agency “had a good plan to protect all of the guests, but especially the president” and that he saw “no indication” of a security lapse.
A spokesman for the Secret Service did not respond to requests for comment.
Former Secret Service agents said they agreed that presidential security should be reviewed, and that complacency is always a worry, particularly when the agency is protecting venues it has worked in for many years. The Washington Hilton, for instance, has hosted the correspondents’ dinner since the 1960s, with presidents and top officials frequently in attendance.
“You have to look at it with fresh eyes all the time,” said Christopher Stanley, a former deputy assistant director of the agency. “It’s familiar territory but the planning has to be continually re-examined.”
The attempted attack on Saturday represented the third time in two years that a lone gunman had managed to challenge the Secret Service, an agency with an annual budget of more than $3 billion.
After breaching the Secret Service security checkpoint, the gunman, identified by authorities as Cole Tomas Allen, was stopped as he sped toward the ballroom, which was one level down from the checkpoint.
In a note that law enforcement officials said Mr. Allen wrote before the attack, he commented on what he felt were inadequate security measures, including the fact that “no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”
Mr. Trump and the White House praised the agency’s swift response at the dinner.
“As President Trump has repeatedly said, he has full confidence in the brave men and women of the Secret Service,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
Even so, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, held a meeting on Monday with senior leadership at the Secret Service and its parent agency, the Homeland Security Department, to discuss what had happened and ensure the president has the protection he needs at similar events in the future.
Almost immediately after the attempted attack on Saturday, the Secret Service faced questions about what some attendees described as lax security based on the visible measures in place.
“We were there front and center. That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government,” Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said on social media.
Such security concerns are similar to those some in the Secret Service have raised for decades regarding the event at the Washington Hilton, former agents said.
The hotel is not completely sealed off because it is a public space, and guests come and go freely. The ballroom itself is crowded, with barely enough space for servers. As the chaos unfolded Saturday night, C-SPAN viewers could see how difficult it was for security details to reach officials.
“That is a less-than-ideal environment for protection,” said Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service special agent in the presidential protection division.
A spokeswoman for the hotel said the dinner had been conducted “under stringent security protocols” as directed by the Secret Service in coordination with local police and hotel security.
Ronald Layton, a retired senior Secret Service official who worked the press gala event multiple times, said securing the president there was always “labor intensive.”
“It’s the DNA of the Secret Service to want to do everything for the mitigation of risk down to zero,” Mr. Layton said. “So what level of risk is permissible?”
White House chiefs of staff in previous administrations said they had never spent much time considering what now seem like obvious security risks ahead of the clubby gathering that brought together high-profile politicians, journalists and celebrities, often to laugh at jokes delivered from the dais by presidents and comedians.
“I’d always look at the speech to make sure it wasn’t too mean in any places, and that the jokes were all appropriate,” said Ron Klain, who ran the White House under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “It was always secured by the Secret Service and seemed like a safe event.”
Kate Kelly and Devon Lum contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Nicholas Nehamas is a Washington correspondent for The Times, focusing on the Trump administration and its efforts to transform the federal government.
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