Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband was spirited out of a room in the middle of a presentation at a Washington, D.C., high school by his Secret Service security detail on Tuesday over “a security issue,” according to multiple reports.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff was unceremoniously ushered out of the event at 2:18 p.m., with one agent telling him, “We have to go,” according to a reporter with HuffPost.
Enrique Gutierrez, a spokesperson for D.C. Public Schools, later told a pool reporter traveling with Emhoff that there had been a bomb threat made. The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed the threat to CNN, with a spokesperson saying that the D.C. Police Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit was on the scene at the school.
Students at Dunbar High School were evacuated just under 20 minutes after the second gentleman, with an announcement to leave the school building coming over the intercom.
Dunbar’s principal, Nadine Smith, told reporters there that their protocol was to clear the building, and that students had been sent home for the day. “We won’t be able to clear the building for probably another hour or two,” she added.
Just over two hours later, a spokesperson with the Metropolitan Police Department said at a press conference that sweep procedures had concluded and the school building was safe to enter again.
Local police had consulted the FBI, the spokesperson explained, and it was their “preliminary” belief that the threat was unrelated to the spate of recent bomb threats plaguing a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in recent weeks.
The Tuesday incident at Dunbar came just hours after a separate bomb threat was made to Atlanta’s Spelman College, a historically Black institution. Last week, 20 schools went into lockdown within hours of each other following a swath of nearly identical threats.
The Metropolitan police spokesperson added that the Secret Service did not believe the threat, called in by an unknown individual, had been made in connection to Emhoff’s visit.
An investigation, headed up by both the department and the FBI, remains ongoing.
Founded in 1870, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School was the United States’ first public high school specifically for Black students. Emhoff had been attending an event there in commemoration of Black History Month.
He had been in the school’s museum section for just over five minutes before an agent told him they would have to leave, according to a pool recording of a presentation made by Smith and several other educators.
“We are so excited,” she told Emhoff and the group at the beginning of the presentation. “I'm, like, jumping out of my skin.”
The incident was the first question of the day’s briefing for White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who replied that she didn’t have any updates to share on the situation.
Shortly after the evacuation, Gutierrez told reporters, “We had a threat today to the facility, so we did—basically we took the precaution of evacuating everybody, as you saw. I think everyone is safe. The building is clear.” He added that he didn’t have any more specific details, however.
