For two weeks before an intruder broke through security at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., the Secret Service had been investigating a mystery shooting near the White House but had come up emptyhanded – to the frustration of both President Trump and top Department of Homeland Security officials – multiple Secret Service sources told RealClearPolitics.
Just after midnight early in the morning after Easter Sunday, Secret Service Uniformed Division officers responded to a shooting near the White House and D.C.’s Lafayette Park, but the Secret Service couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the shot landed. The Secret Service investigated and found rifle shell casings at 16th and I Streets, and a video located the shooter’s vehicle but no images of the gunman.
The Secret Service conducted a search of the park, which was fenced for repairs, and didn’t find a suspect. The agency publicly noted that it had heightened its security posture around the White House in response to the shooting.
The Secret Service publicly said it was looking for a possible vehicle and a person of interest, but that was not the full story, according to two Secret Service sources. The Secret Service had pinpointed the vehicle the shooter used, but it ended up having stolen plates so the agency couldn’t track it to any identifying information about the shooter, and the case went cold.
President Trump continued to want answers, but the Secret Service didn’t fully inform him or others at the White House about all they had uncovered in the probe.
The Secret Service didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry asking why the investigation into the shooting two weeks ago went cold. The agency also didn’t say whether that shooting was related to last night’s shooting at the Washington Hilton, the site of President Reagan's shooting 45 years ago that wounded Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and Metropolitan Police officer Thomas Delahanty.
“They were downplaying the incident,” one source told RCP. “I think they didn’t want to upset [Trump]. He doesn’t know all the details.”
“The stolen plates threw a wrench into the investigation,” the source added. “The park is closed and with all the buildings echoing the noise of the gunshot, it’s hard to pinpoint anything.”
That was just two weeks before a shooter was able to charge past a Secret Service checkpoint outside the WHCA dinner’s ballroom, exchange gunfire with officers, was tackled, and never reached the president or anyone else at the main event.
Officials confirmed that the suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, rushed the checkpoint at 8:36 p.m. carrying a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives.
Trump said the suspect was “armed with multiple weapons” and charged a security checkpoint before shots were fired. Guests, including Erika Kirk and the Washington press corps, were forced to seek cover under their tables, and Trump and Vice President JD Vance were rushed off stage, along with the White House press corps executives.
Trump, his Cabinet members, and all dinner guests escaped unharmed, although many attendees were traumatized by the shooting and by Trump and Vance’s rapid evacuation. Kirk left the dinner visibly shaken and crying, and saying she just wanted to go home. The suspect is in custody and will be charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon. Metropolitan Police Chief Jeffrey Carrol said the suspect was a hotel guest and was not struck by gunfire. Law enforcement officials also later disclosed that they believe he booked a room in the Hilton in early April.
“They seem to think he was a lone wolf,” Trump, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, told the nation in a televised press conference.
Trump was referring to the Secret Service, whom he praised for quick action to save his life and possibly many others.
“They acted very quickly – I was very impressed with the Secret Service,” he said, adding that he’d be the first to complain if they hadn’t. It’s my life, and I want to live because I want to make this country great.”
“When you’re impactful, they go after you – when you’re not, they leave you alone,” he added.
Just minutes after Trump spoke, Secret Service Director Sean Curran made a rare public appearance at a press conference with the Metropolitan Police where he applauded the work of agents and Uniformed Division officers. He did not answer questions about whether the gunman shot a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer, who was protected by a bullet-proof vest, or whether the officer was hit by friendly fire from other law enforcement officers.
The Secret Service team performed “admirably,” Curran said. “We got to see what they do, and that individual who charged a checkpoint was apprehended.”
“It shows that our multi-layered protection works, and I’m grateful to our partners that assist us with these sites and protecting these sites. It’s very fortunate that this officer is alive, is being observed.”
“I’m grateful that the president reached out to this officer earlier. I ask everybody to pray for him and all of our officers and agents that were involved, and I will tell you, we will continue with the mission,” Curran concluded.
That official narrative from Saturday night is, in important respects, a success story. As crises go, this one ended about as well as it could.
But the more important story – the one that deserves rigorous scrutiny in the days ahead – begins several steps earlier. Not at the checkpoint. In the Secret Service’s most basic security planning decisions to continue holding the event at a hotel, considering the threats against Trump, and whether to allow unvetted guests to stay there.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who was a few feet away when the shooting began, said the gunman appeared to have gone through the metal detector – yet was armed with a weapon he proceeded to fire. Instead of tackling him, the agents allowed him to blaze through the checkpoint. If accurate, that is not a success. That is a failure of a critical layer of what Curran refered to as a multi-layered defense.
One former administration official wondered how many close calls Trump gets before Curran and others at the Secret Service lose their jobs. “The guy is going to get killed, and everyone will keep their jobs,” the former official remarked.
A source familiar with the presidential security protocols said White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles oversees the Secret Service and has let him remain in his job despite numerous failures on his watch. “They’re about to fire Kash and he had nothing to do with this, while Susie oversees the Secret Service, and it’s failure after failure and she gets no blame,” the source said. “This should’ve been the most secure perimeter in the world. And the fact that the guy made it through the mags underscores the epic failure of the U.S. Secret Service in protecting the president.”
The question that has not been answered – and that authorities should be pressed on – is how a man carrying a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives cleared the screening checkpoint that stood between a hotel lobby and the corridors providing access to the ballroom where the president of the United States, the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and dozens of other senior officials were seated.
“The response was solid from the Secret Service’s presidential detail and motorcade, but it should never have gotten to that point,” said Rich Staropoli, retired longtime Secret Service agent who also served as a senior DHS official. “And why were there bureau guys at the event in tuxedos, but the Secret Service director wasn’t there?”
“This guy just isn’t engaged,” Staropoli said of Curran. “Why did he not acknowledge the Uniformed Division officers who was hit more. He should have been running that presser.”
Staropoli also acknowledged that more was disclosed about the dinner shooting’s suspect than the public has ever learned about Thomas Crooks, the would-be assassin who nearly killed Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania, or Ryan Routh, who was aiming at Trump in the bushes at a golf course in West Palm Beach.
The fact that preliminary evidence indicates Allen was a guest at the hotel where the dinner was being held is at the crux of the problem. Hotel guests at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night were in proximity to one of the highest-value security targets in the world.
What additional screening applied to them? Were their rooms searched? Were they vetted against threat databases? If a paying guest could bring a shotgun and a handgun into that building and get within sprinting distance of a ballroom holding a line of presidential succession, the answers to those questions are deeply inadequate.
Trump said Saturday night differed from Butler because the Secret Service had left the sloped roof of American Glass Research building, where shooter Thomas Crooks opened fire, unmanned. But that was just one of the Butler failures. Another was the easy public accesd to the security perimeter itself, where unvetted members of the public could enter and have direct lines of site at the stage. Once again, Saturday night showed a flawed security plan on some of the most basic levels – the plan didn't prevent hotel guests from accessing the lobby leading to the ballroom. The initial screening area also didn't include barriers impeding uninvited intruders from barreling right through it.
Security footage released by the president shows Allen sprinting through metal detectors and past law enforcement officers, who turned toward him with guns raised. The footage, paradoxically offered as evidence of a capable response, raises its own uncomfortable question: The moment agents raised their weapons, the gunman was already through, and no one tackled him. The checkpoint stopped him – barely, and at the cost of an officer absorbing a bullet – but the screening that was supposed to make the checkpoint unnecessary had already failed.
This is the third time since 2024 that a would-be attacker has gotten dangerously close to the president. It was the third time since 2024 that Trump had been under threat by an attacker in his immediate vicinity, including the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, that injured him and killed a local firefighter.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the checkpoint worked, and that there was no one who was injured” beyond the officer struck in his vest. With respect to the U.S. attorney, that framing is too comfortable. A checkpoint that absorbs gunfire and an injured officer is not a system working as designed. It is a last line of defense doing the job that earlier layers of security failed to do.
The agents on the ground Saturday night were brave. That is not in question. What is in question is the lapses in a protection plan that put them in that position – and whether anyone in a position of authority is willing to ask, plainly and publicly, how a man was in that hotel armed for war and was able to confront Secret Service agents and officers at the last line of defense.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.
