Secret Service Sees Record Threats Before Correspondents Dinner
(Bloomberg) -- The US Secret Service is preparing to secure a rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday amid what its director called the
(Bloomberg) -- The US Secret Service is preparing to secure a rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday amid what its director called the highest threat level of his 24-year career, three months after a shooting disrupted the association’s original gala. “They’re off the charts,” said Sean Curran, Secret Service director, during a briefing. “We are in a heightened level of a threat environment right now.” Curran said the climate had grown more volatile not only for President Donald Trump but for other protectees and local officials. A Secret Service official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the agency has opened about 10,000 threat cases this year, with protective-intelligence cases up roughly 40% from a year earlier and mental-health-related interventions running about 10 times higher than at the same point in 2025.
The dinner has been moved to the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, formerly the Trump International Hotel, following the April 25 attack at the Washington Hilton, where Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old California man, fired a shotgun a floor above the ballroom before agents took him into custody. Allen was stopped with hundreds of federal agents between him and Trump, the Justice Department said, and the president, Vice President JD Vance and members of the cabinet were evacuated. He has been charged with trying to assassinate Trump. Curran said the agency’s screening at the April dinner worked as designed, with metal detectors set roughly 120 yards from the podium, farther than the length of a football field.
“We do expect bad people to show up,” Curran said, adding that the agency reevaluates every site before each visit, even familiar ones. Deputy Director Matthew Quinn rejected the idea that a repeat event invites a repeat approach. “We’re not looking at this as a redo of a dinner,” he said. “We’re looking at this as a presidential site with Cabinet members and other protectees there.” Quinn tied the danger to hostility from abroad, noting that Iran has publicly said it wants to kill Trump, and said the agency also weighs intelligence it wouldn’t detail. He called the potential threat from drones a top priority. “It’s a matter of time before it comes to the United States,” he said, pointing to the war in Ukraine and activity at the southern border.
He acknowledged that a detection system failed during the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and said the agency had since put significant money behind the problem. On the White House itself, Curran said officials are still weighing whether to make its security fencing permanent. “If it were up to me, I would put 30-foot fences,” he said. The agency declined to describe enhanced security measures it’s putting in place for the rescheduled dinner. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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