A series of security threats closed portions of the White House and Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
In the middle of White House press secretary Josh Earnest’s daily briefing, officials told all repeaters to evacuate the briefing room. The North Lawn of the White House was also cleared.
The Secret Service said a bomb threat had been called in to the DC Metropolitan Police Department targeting the briefing room specifically. The evacuation at the White House came just hours after U.S. Capitol Police received a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of a hearing on the TSA in the Dirksen Senate office building.
Earnest said President Barack Obama who was in the White House at the time, was not moved during the evacuation.
“I have complete confidence in the professionalism of the men and women of the secret service to make judgments about what’s necessary to keep all of us safe,” Earnest told reporters during the briefing after it resumed, though it remained unclear why only part of the complex had been evacuated.
The Senate building was later given the all clear and there’s no sign of whether the two events were connected. Reporters were allowed back into the White House briefing room roughly a half hour after the evacuation began, and Earnest’s briefing resumed shortly there after.
The TSA hearing was called by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in response to a report that was leaked revealing significant flaws in the agency’s terror-vetting process. According to a CNN report, cracks in the system included TSA failing to identify 73 active workers who had links to terrorism.
Sophie Tatum, CNN