Man Arrested After Threatening To Bomb White House [Updated]

A man has been taken into custody after driving up to a White House check point and claiming that he had a bomb in his car. According to a report from The Guardian, the Secret Service has confirmed that the man was detained at approximately 11:05 p.m. on Saturday night, after security guards “declared his vehicle suspicious.”

Security at the White House has been upgraded and local roads were closed as police check the vehicle for explosives. The statement did not mention that any sort of explosives had been found, but emergency vehicles were on scene and a bomb disposal robot was seen investigating the trunk of a vehicle. According to the statement, the Secret Service has “increased their posture of readiness.”

As per CNN reporter Ryan Nobles on scene, members of the police bomb squad were pulling items out of the trunk and investigating them one by one. The vehicle was left running and in the same spot for at least three hours.

White supremacists and members of the Alt-Right on Twitter took the opportunity to harass Nobles, claiming that he was “helping him up assassinations-rhetoric against our president” and that “you and your network own such incidents.”

Four hours in, the car was still being checked.

Trump was not at the White House at the time; he is currently at his weekend resort, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida.

This is the third security incident at the White House in two weeks. On March 10, a man scaled the White House fence and was on the ground for 16 minutes before the Secret Service detained him. A day later, someone jumped over a bike rack in the buffer zone in front of the White House, but was unable to make it over the fence.

For whatever reason, White House security seems perennially incapable of keeping people off of White House grounds. In fact, in 2014, former Army sniper Omar Gonzalez was able to make it to the far end of the East Room carrying a knife (Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned after Gonzalez’s infiltration.) In 2016, a Florida man, Douglas Hughes, landed his gyrocopter on the White House lawn, prompting a four-month jail sentence (out of a possible nine-and-a-half years.)

Hughes announced his intentions in advance and his act was intended as an act of protest, but it remains that he was successful in flying an aircraft through miles of restricted airspace and landing directly in front of the Capitol.

Update No. 1: According to a report by FOX News, one individual is currently in custody and being interviewed by officials. Sources could not say if the individual was intoxicated, or what his motivations were.

Meanwhile, as the story continues to spread, responses on social media seem largely unconcerned. Commentators appear to be more interested in attacking each other, declaring the incident to be a false-flag, and reiterating that Trump is not presently in the White House.

President Bannon is having these security breaches performed to make DJT not just appear to be in danger but to amp up his paranoia

— MaryMo (@MaryM49) March 19, 2017

https://twitter.com/hettym73/status/843330070274064384

https://twitter.com/rcrocket1/status/843324368059088896

Currently, no further information is forthcoming, but the Inquisitr will update if and when more is known.

[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]