Link: https://therealnews.com/trump-uses-correspondents-dinner-shooting-to-justify-expanding-spying-powers-as-deadline-nears

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 27, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

An exchange of gunfire between an armed suspect and law enforcement outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday came days ahead of a deadline for extending far-reaching government surveillance powers, and President Donald Trump wasted no time in claiming that the attempted attack on the event proved that the FBI must be permitted to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump repeated his previous remarks that he is “willing to give up [his] security” in favor of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on Thursday—and suggested other Americans should do the same for “the safety of our nation.”

Section 702 allows US intelligence agencies to surveil the electronic communications of foreign nationals overseas without a warrant. Since some of the nearly 350,000 foreign nationals whose communications have been collected under the law are in touch with Americans, Section 702 allows for the collection of emails, text messages, and phone calls of US citizens.

Fox anchor Jacqui Heinrich emphasized that “we don’t know right now” whether the suspect in Saturday’s shooting, Cole Tomas Allen, “was radicalized” by a foreign individual or group, but asked whether the attack drove home “the importance of having these tools to protect our country from these kinds of threats.”

The president responded by complaining that former FBI Director James Comey used FISA to obtain warrants to surveil a former Trump aide as part of the agency’s investigation into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign’s communications with Russia, before saying FISA has been used in the US-Israeli war on Iran and in the US military’s invasion of Venezuela earlier this year.

“It’s really needed for national security,” said Trump. “Iran is decimated, and we got a lot of information by using FISA… I’m willing to give up my security for the military because ultimately that’s to me the highest cause is, you know, the safety of our nation.”

Pres. Trump, under prodding from Fox News, exploits White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting to push for Congress to approve FISA domestic spying program: "It's really needed for national security…"

He reiterates that he's willing to give up his liberties for safety. pic.twitter.com/tmcepp0Wgn

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) April 26, 2026

Jordan Liz, an associate professor of philosophy at San José State University, wrote last week in a column at Common Dreams that while Trump, Republican lawmakers, and US intelligence agencies “make sweeping claims about the terror attacks that Section 702 has prevented, there is little publicly available evidence to support this.”

“According to the Cato Institute, there is only one well-documented, independently corroborated case of Section 702 preventing a terrorist attack on American soil: the 2009 New York subway bombing plot,” wrote Liz. “In that case, Section 702 was used by the [National Security Agency] to track an exchange between an al-Qaeda courier and Najibullah Zazi, who was living in the US. The NSA passed this information to the FBI, which identified Zazi and disrupted the attack before it took place. Importantly, however, the NSA allegedly received the courier’s foreign email address from the government’s British intelligence partners. At best then, this success was a byproduct of productive intelligence sharing between allies. Rather than proving the necessity of Section 702, this incident underscores how Trump’s inane attacks against key US allies undermine our national security.”

The suspect in Saturday’s shooting is believed to have acted alone, and no evidence has been released that he was in communication with any foreign entities. A document he wrote alluded to his Christian beliefs and to reports of the administration’s abuse of immigrants in detention centers, its boat-bombing operations in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the bombing of an elementary school in Iran.

The president has been pushing in recent weeks for an extension of Section 702. The program was last reauthorized in 2024, and earlier this month two efforts to extend the program—one for 18 months and the other for five years—failed, with opponents objecting to a lack of privacy reforms and to a loophole allowing data brokers to sell private information about Americans to government agencies that have not obtained judicial approval to seize the data.

After those proposals failed, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week unveiled a new bill to extend Section 702 for three years and require the FBI to submit monthly reports on its reviews of Americans’ private data to an oversight official, as well as imposing penalties for abuse—provisions that were dismissed by privacy advocates.

The House Rules Committee was set to convene on Monday, a step toward advancing the new bill toward a vote in the House, and according to NPR, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) circulated a memo late last week urging his colleagues to reject the Republicans’ latest proposal.

The bill, he wrote, “continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans’ data… FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge.”

Four Democrats in the House—Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NJ), Marie Gluesencamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Jared Golden (D-Maine)—broke with the party and joined the GOP earlier this month in supporting a procedural vote to advance the reauthorization of Section 702, and privacy advocates are ramping up pressure on them to oppose the latest proposal for an extension.

“It all comes down to those four and where they are going to land,” Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, told The Intercept Monday, “and if they are going to continue to try to hand Trump and [White House homeland security adviser] Stephen Miller warrantless surveillance authorities without any sort of checks or reforms that make sure they’re not violating civil liberties.”

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Even their bullshit false flag operations are pathetic.

I'm not usually in on conspiracies, but this one really doesn't add up. Seems reeeeal weird to say the least.

Apparently they don't actually have any proof the guy fired a gun (there was a spent shell in the shotgun, but the admin has said the shot ss officer was possibly friendly fire? You'd think they could tell a shotgun in bulletproof plate from 9mm impact...)

We don't have a name on the ss officer that was shot or any evidence he was shot at all.

Coordinated "tHiS iS wHy We NeEd tHe BaLlRoOm" campaign by grifters

Response to move trump was real slow despite having had 2 prior assassination attempts made.

despite having had 2 prior assassination attempts made

Which also makes the fact that someone was able to sprint through a security checkpoint very strange. You can’t even do that at Disneyland

Totally not the kind of thing he would do if this was in fact, staged.

But that's worse! We're letting these people end the world. These guys. Mouth breathing morons.

Yes, it must be staged.

As we all know, our President typically never tries to exploit situations for his own benefit and often observes a period of quiet contemplation before addressing issues in a calm, selfless, and reasonable manner.

The fact that he's out here shamelessly trying to use this situation to push agenda items while relentlessly posting on social media is strong evidence!

/s

This conspiracy nonsense is getting old, live in reality not in a fact-free world of made up stories which confirm your own biases. If you want that there's plenty of room in MAGA/QANON/AntiVaxxer/Contrails/FlatEart land.

Apparently they don’t actually have any proof the guy fired a gun (there was a spent shell in the shotgun, but the admin has said the shot ss officer was possibly friendly fire? You’d think they could tell a shotgun in bulletproof plate from 9mm impact…)

How do you know that they don't have proof? It's been 2 days since the arraignment, it may be a bit early to jump to conclusions about what they do or do not have.

In any case, it is not standard procedure in any criminal case to release evidence to the public before a criminal trial.

Have you seen the firearms evidence report against Mangione? You haven't, because that information isn't made public because there is a pending trial. It will be the same here.

Coordinated “tHiS iS wHy We NeEd tHe BaLlRoOm” campaign by grifters

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ex-trump-ally-maga-influencers-041219770.html

“So, last week I told you guys that all of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their messaging in lock-step via group chat,” St. Clair said in the video. “And what do you know? All of these people came to the conclusion that after they saw what happened at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, their first thought was, all, independently, Trump needs his ballroom.”

The shooting was at 8:35pm

This article has a list of all of the twitter posters: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/maga-influencers-ballroom-posts/

Snopes verified each comment individually and found the earliest was published on April 25 at 9:28 p.m. ET, while the latest was published at 10:55 p.m.

Trump had his phone and was posting on Truth Social at 9:17 PM, 10 minutes before the group started their coordinated posting about the ballroom.

The most likely explanation, and one that fits the timing, is that Trump was on his phone talking to the Signal group and coordinating the ballroom message and posting on social media.

Shooting was fake:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/legal-filing-raises-questions-about-who-shot-secret-service-officer-press-dinner-2026-04-29/

Is this even in the news in America? Or did the media cover it up.

I don't "know" for certain yet. But they have been really cagey about even answering whether Allen fired any shots. And the one guy they originally reported him as having shot with buckshot to the chest, now they can't determine whether that was actually friendly fire.

These guys were all packing pistols. Iirc from photos there were some guys with ARs.

Do you think you could easily identify the effects of a shotgun firing buckshot at relatively close range from that of a pistol? I bet you could. It's really easy. Bunch of little holes creating 1 really big hole if close enough? Shotgun. 1 small hole? Pistol/rifle.

More than one thing can be true.

Trump could have staged it.

He could be taking advantage of the situation to push an agenda.

Both can be true at the same time.

The reason so many people are quick to believe is because Trump has a history of projection where he accuses other people of doing things that he himself would or has done. And Trump and his followers have accused so many others of false flag or staged events.

CONSTANTLY

So when you have a history of a guy who's face shows up under "psychological projection" in the dictionary, constantly accusing others of things, you can credibly believe that he would do those things himself.

I'm not saying this was a staged event, and I have no idea of the reality. But I 100% believe this is a thing he would do.

A conspiracy is just a group of people deciding to do something in secret. They do, in fact, happen all the time.

Sure, there was a conspiracy. A bunch of right-wing social media people coordinated the ballroom message: https://slate.com/technology/2026/04/trump-ballroom-ashley-st-clair-maga.html

I was referring to people calling it staged. As in the President knew this was going to happen, planned for it to happen and made it happen.

It's nonsense, there is zero evidence for this being true.

I mean, as far as a conspiracy, there's ample evidence that adversarial nations use their intelligence services, bots and hired trolls to push messaging on social media to create conflict and division.

What are these troll farms doing around this situation? They are not simply sitting out and not messaging around this topic... so what message are these kinds of groups pushing?

It does seem pretty suspicious that every single one of these security incidents was followed by a tsunami of 'it was staged' posts full of the same bad faith interpretations, misinformation, toxic trolling behavior and vote manipulation. After a few weeks all of the people rabidly pushing these ideas seem to disappear outside of the regular conspiracy places. Kind of like they've moved on to another topic en masse.

If you're a member of this community you'll recognize how different a tone exists in these kinds of threads than in all of the others related to Privacy. It is almost as if there are people from outside of the community who are going around to the various communities and pushing a specific message.

If you looked at the comment history of the people pushing these messages you'd find that they have few, if any, comments in this community before this topic.

On the other hand, there is ZERO evidence to support the shooter being part of a secret plan to (...what?) get a ballroom built.

Trump could have staged it.

Sure.

When you put 'could have' in front of something you can describe any situation that isn't explicitly ruled out. Including absolutely crazy and wildly improbable scenarios that are impossible to disprove.

This guy 'could have' been a clone dropped off by aliens a few days before the attack. We haven't seen anything that rules it out.

This incident 'could have' not happened at all. Maybe the devices and social media feeds of you and all of the people you socialize with are being modified as you read them creating the illusion that an event took place while the rest of the world goes on oblivious.

You 'could have' not existed until this very moment when you suddenly popped into existence with your brain built in such a way as to have memories of your life that never actually happened.

When you use 'could have' you open the door to fantasy scenarios. So yes, it could have been staged... by extradiminsional beings for which Trump is only their 3-diminsional form.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the individual agents who were on the scene probably has a pretty good idea of what happened just by observing the state of things the moment he was captured.

It's just that their interpretation, like any crime scene evidence, isn't made public so we can only speculate.

The less information we have, the wilder the speculations can be and still fit the evidence. When there is new evidence the wild speculations can be updated to take into account the new information because there will always be things that are not clear or that we don't know and a motivated person could find explanations and 'just so' stories that fit those gaps.

This happens constantly with Evolution vs Religion arguments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps Every time we don't know something, some theist will come along and insert god into that unknown. We didn't know how eyes evolved so theists said that it must be god that did it, then we learned how eyes evolved.

The trick here is that given incomplete information, which is often the case, anybody can create a story that just so happens to fit. Here, we have a ton of incomplete information so there is fertile ground for people to just make things up.

Regarding ballistics evidence, I am talking about one very specific thing that they have explicitly refused to comment on: whether he actually shot that guy. Even in the charging documents, about him discharging a firearm in the commission of a violent attmepted crime or whatever it's called, they still don't say that he discharged it at the ss officer.

I take your point, but I am not wildly speculating. Them witholding evidence in a very specific way is itself evidence as it implies a possibility (that the shotgun was not fired at the ss officer).

I'm not yet saying that certainly didn't happen, just that we're hearing different things from different sources who were present, the charging docs, etc. that do not line up in the way you expect.

That opens the door for questions around what really went down. Nothing definitive, but it raises questions.

I take your point, but I am not wildly speculating. Them witholding evidence in a very specific way is itself evidence as it implies a possibility (that the shotgun was not fired at the ss officer).

Yeah, I understand. I did think it was odd how they were wording their statements, it made me think it was friendly fire as well.

I just think the 'staged' conspiracies are just complete nonsense.

There are plenty of unknowns, but to take all of those unknowns and fill in the blanks with the same 'it was staged' conspiracy that has appeared after every assassination attempt doesn't help anyone understand the situation, it only creates a cloud of misinformation so it's harder to determine what is true or not.

What a nonsensical point.

Since you like links;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

"form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that following the logic of a contrary proposition or argument would lead to absurdity"

I need to add

You are setting up a false equivalence. There is a vast difference between a baseless, unprovable fantasy (like alien clones) and evaluating a public figure's actions based on a well-documented history of psychological projection.

When someone constantly accuses their opponents of staging events and has a documented history of projection, it creates a lack of trust. The reason people question the narrative is because of that history, not because they are entertaining fantasies about the Matrix or alien clones. Equating a discussion about someone's known behavioral patterns to science fiction doesn't address the core issue of trust.

What about this point is nonsense?

When you put ‘could have’ in front of something you can describe any situation that isn’t explicitly ruled out.

Saying something 'could have' happened isn't saying anything useful. It's like using the phrase 'some people say' to state a position. You can find ANY kind of argument said by some people. It's a weasel phrase. Anything which is possible, that isn't explicitly ruled out by the evidence, 'could have' happened.

As far as your wiki link. reductio involves assuming the contrary of a claim and showing that it leads to absurdity or contradiction, thereby proving the original claim.

I didn't assume the contrary of their claim nor was I trying to prove their original claim (I agreed that it 'could have' happened).

I was taking the same premise ("could have") and showing that you can extend it to other fantastical scenarios. This is not formal reductio, it is a demonstration of how a weak modal standard ("could have") licenses absurdities.

• Legal filing raises questions about who shot Secret Service officer at press dinner (Reuters, April 29, 2026)

Court filing omits claim Allen shot Secret Service officer, contrasting with earlier official statements

Security footage reviewed by Washington Post shows no evidence Allen fired at officers

Source of officer's gunshot wound remains unclear

I was referring to people calling it staged.

Yeah, I understand. I did think it was odd how they were wording their statements, it made me think it was friendly fire as well.

article has been deleted.. The plot thickens...

The pedophile class spying on us what a joke. They are the criminals.

It loads for me here in Europe.

hmm today I'm getting "access denied" instead of a 404 like yesterday. I am in Europe, too but maybe Reuters doesn't like my VPN.

Yeah could be. But yes, that article was on their front page for about 30 minutes, then other news replaced it. And to me, this is an article that should create a massive reaction in the public. But nope, nobody cares.

Never let a good crisis go to waste they always say.