Secret Service Sees Record Threats Before Correspondents' Dinner

(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Secret Service is preparing to secure Friday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner amid what its director called the highest level of threat of his 24-year career, three months after a shooting disrupted the association’s original gala.

“They’re off the charts,” Sean Curran, the director of the Secret Service, said during a briefing. “We are in an elevated level of threat environment right now.” Curran said the climate has become more volatile not only for President Donald Trump, but also for other protected and local officials.

A Secret Service official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agency had opened about 10,000 threat cases this year, with protective intelligence cases up about 40% from the previous year and mental health interventions about 10 times higher than at the same point in 2025.

The dinner was moved to the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, formerly the Trump International Hotel, after 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 was accused of trying to assassinate Trump.

Curran said the agency’s screening at the April dinner functioned as designed, with metal detectors placed roughly 120 yards from the stage, farther than the length of a football field.

“We expect bad people to show up,” Curran said, adding that the agency reviews every site, even familiar ones, before each visit.

Deputy director Matthew Quinn rejected the idea that a repeat event warranted a repeat approach. “We’re not looking at it as a repeat dinner,” he said. “We’re looking at it as a presidential position with cabinet members and other proteges.”

Quinn linked the danger to hostility from abroad, noting that Iran has publicly said it wants to kill Trump, and said the agency is also considering intelligence, which he would not elaborate on.

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 on the southern border.

He acknowledged that a detection system failed during the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and said the agency has poured significant money into the problem since then.

As for the White House itself, Curran said officials are still considering whether to make its security fencing permanent. “If it were up to me, I’d build thirty-foot fences,” he said.

The agency declined to describe the heightened security measures it is putting in place for the rescheduled dinner.

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