The U.S. Capitol Police anticipated a drone attack on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event at the White House before the FBI broke up a plot to do exactly that, documents obtained by Reason show. An intelligence assessment on May 20 mentioned the possibility of "nefarious actors plotting to use weaponized drones" or to fire from "high vantage points" against UFC spectators. A month later, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd announced the first arrest in "a plot to murder members of the federal government" with a combined drone and sniper assault.
The Trump administration has used the alleged attack plot as an argument for a $600 million expansion to the White House. (Despite the administration's claims, about half the cost will come from American taxpayers.) "This Project will support a highly sophisticated Drone Port and Sniper Nests atop the Ballroom that would destroy any effort to launch such an attack," Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote in a June 16 letter to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which is hearing a lawsuit by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against the project. But the FBI announcement and the newly disclosed Capitol Police document show that old-fashioned police work—not expensive defensive works or mass surveillance—was enough to protect the White House.
