A person jumped over a bike rack in a buffer zone in front of the White House on Saturday but was not able to make it over the fence into the grounds, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Twitter.

President Donald Trump was not at the White House. He and his family were spending the weekend at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida.



CNN reported that two secret service agents tackled the individual. The area is the start of a buffer zone between the main White House fence and the sidewalks.

The secret service was earlier criticized after it said a man who scaled the White House fence last week was on the property’s grounds for 16 minutes before being detained.

Video surveillance footage shows Jonathan Tuan Tran, 26, of Milpitas, California, climbing the fence near the Treasury Department adjacent to the White House security fence and making his way to a south entrance, the criminal complaint said.

Tran, who the secret service said was carrying two cans of Mace, was charged with entering restricted grounds while carrying a dangerous weapon and faces up to 10 years in prison.

Trump was inside the executive mansion at the time. He praised the secret service for doing a “fantastic job” apprehending a “troubled person”.

Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN on Friday Tran was able to “look through” a White House window and roam the grounds undetected. Chaffetz called the incident a “complete and utter total failure”.

The secret service stressed that the intruder never made it inside White House. The agency said it was still investigating and had put additional security posts, technology enhancements and new response protocols into place.

Individual jumped bike rack on Pennsylvania Ave, not @WhiteHouse fence. Great response by @SecretService — Sean Spicer (@PressSec) March 18, 2017

It was the first known security breach at the White House since Trump took office two months ago.

Similar lapses occurred during the eight years that Barack Obama was president. In September 2014, an army veteran with mental health problems scaled a fence on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House and made it deep inside the building, to the East Room, before the secret service could detain him. The Obamas were not at home at the time.

The incident was one of several breakdowns by the secret service that ultimately led to the resignation of the agency’s director, Julia Pierson, the following month.

Trump has to find someone new to lead the agency. Joseph Clancy, a former agent who came out of retirement to succeed Pierson, announced his second retirement last month.

Separately, the secret service said on Friday a laptop was stolen from an agent’s car in New York City but that such agency-issued computers contain multiple layers of security and are not permitted to contain classified information.

The secret service did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday’s incident.