White House Correspondents’ Dinner Live Updates: Suspected shooter ‘sought to assassinate president,’ Levitt says

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that “the system worked” and kept President Donald Trump and other leaders safe from gunfire Saturday night during a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner they were attending.

“The system worked; law enforcement and the Secret Service protected all of us,” Blanche told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos. “The guy barely crossed the perimeter. So when you have a perimeter designed to keep people safe, like President Trump, and it works — that’s something to be applauded.”

The suspect, identified by law enforcement as 31-year-old Cole Allen of Torrance, California, was likely acting alone, though the investigation is ongoing, Blanche said.

“We believe he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then Chicago to Washington, D.C.,” Blanche said.

When Blanche was asked how the suspect got a firearm into the hotel, she replied, “It’s a good question. And listen, I’m not sure. It looks like he checked in on the 24th.” [of April] To the hotel, and we’re still looking at surveillance cameras and footage of where he walked and how he got in and how those firearms got in, but at the end of the day, I expect we’ll have a lot more on this in the coming days.

– ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim