The White House on Monday dodged questions about why Secret Service agents protecting President Biden’s granddaughter, Naomi Biden, opened fire on three people attempting to break into a Secret Service vehicle in Washington.
“This is personal information. Anything that deals with personal information, I would refer you to the Secret Service,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Reporters at the daily White House press briefing continued to pepper Ms. Jean-Pierre with questions about the incident that occurred in Georgetown late Sunday night. But she continued to insist it involved “personal” information that could only be addressed by the Secret Service, and declined to say whether the president has spoken to Naomi Biden since the incident.
Ms. Jean-Pierre quickly pivoted to blaming Republicans for the rising crime in Washington.
“We have been very serious on dealing with crime that we’ve seen across the country and we’d love to work with Republicans on this, but they have not been serious on this,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “We have put forth the Safer America plan — $45 billion to continue to invest to make sure we are actually dealing with this type of crime. We don’t hear anything from them. So House Republicans, Republicans more broadly in Congress, if they want to get this done, we are willing to work with them.”
The Safer America Plan was unveiled last summer as part of Mr. Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal. It would focus on hiring and retaining officers, intervention strategies and other tools that the administration says would crack down on crime.
As part of the plan, nearly $13 billion would be used by communities to hire 100,000 officers across the country over the next five years. The money would come in the form of grants to “recruit, train, support and manage” officers.
Much of the proposal did not make it into the final budget when it was approved last year.
Agents assigned to Naomi Biden witnessed three people breaking into the window of a parked and unoccupied government vehicle in Georgetown, the Secret Service said in a statement. One of the agents opened fire, but no one was struck and the alleged suspects immediately fled the scene.
The Secret Service has put out a regional bulletin to D.C. police to be on the lookout for a red vehicle in which the suspects used to flee the scene.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.