The Secret Service evacuated a White House press briefing on Tuesday, cutting short questions from the media to Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Earnest told the press afterward that President Barack Obama was not in any danger or affected by the threat.
According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller and video shown on Fox News and MSNBC, the briefing was interrupted suddenly and reporters were cleared out of the Brady briefing room and moved to the nearby Eisenhower building.
At about 2:30 p.m. EST, Earnest tweeted that the briefing would resume in its original location shortly. MSNBC’s Peter Alexander reported that the press were allowed to re-enter the Brady room around that same time.
Earnest returned to the Brady room to brief the press at about 2:45 p.m. EST and said that the Metropolitan police notified the Secret Service that it had received a “telephonic bomb threat” and the room was being checked for everyone’s safety.
Cameras within the press room were covered up by officials on the scene. Earnest did not offer any information as to why they were covered up.
A few hours earlier, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee broke up a hearing on TSA oversight “due to a suspicious package in the Dirksen Senate Office Building,” according to NBC News.
Secret Service interrupts WH press briefing to evacuate.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) June 9, 2015
Watch video of the evacuation on MSNBC:
Here is video of the TSA hearing going into recess earlier:
This post has been updated.
It’s amazing how small that room really is. One of the most famous rooms in the world and it’s like a double-wide.
It’ll take precisely 5 nanoseconds for Faux, Alex Jones, Breitbart, et al., to claim this was a false flag operation designed to distract from hard questions and the administration’s “scandals” something something Benghazi herpa derpa…
If Frappuccinos® were spilled there’ll be hell to pay…
Reality really needs to stop copying Veep.