Intruder arrested in White House grounds

A MAN appeared before a judge in Washington DC yesterday after being arrested for jumping over the White House fence just before midnight, telling the secret service: “I am a friend of the president.”

The man, identified by a spokesman for the US attorney’s office as Jonathan Tran, 26, was wearing a rucksack as he breached the security perimeter at 11:38pm on Friday night.

He made his way across the grounds and got close to the South Portico entrance, before he was stopped.

“No,” he reportedly told secret service. “I am a friend of the president. I have an appointment.”

Donald Trump, who was in the White House at the time, told reporters yesterday that the United States secret service did a “fantastic job”.

The president said he was told about the intruder on Friday night, and called him a “troubled person”. Mr Trump made his comments at the start of a meeting with cabinet members and senior White House staff at a golf course he owns outside Washington DC.

Questions were being raised as to how the intruder could have made it so far into the grounds.

In 2015 three people jumped over the fence, including Joseph Caputo, who leapt the barrier on Thanksgiving Day, cloaked in an American flag and carrying an envelope. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanour charges, and in January was sentenced to three years’ probation, but spared prison.

Since Caputo’s attempt, the fence was fitted with 7-inch steel spikes to prevent such occurrences.

That has not deterred all intruders. In April last year a man was arrested for jumping over the White House fence on a Friday night.

In the most significant breach of recent times Omar Gonzalez, a 42-yearold Iraq war veteran, ran through the main floor past a stairway that leads up to the first family’s residence before he was subdued by Secret Service agents in the East Room.