The 2009 White House state dinner crashers waltzed past Secret Service with nothing but a smile.
Saturday night, a gunman charged a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton with multiple weapons.
What one reporter found when he tried to get inside will make your blood boil.
The Secret Service Security Failure at the Washington Hilton
The White House Correspondents' Dinner was held Saturday night at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C.
President Trump, the First Lady, Vice President Vance, Speaker Johnson, and the full Cabinet were inside. The networks threw pre-parties on the floors above. Hundreds of journalists, political operatives, and media figures packed the building.
Joe DePaolo, editor in chief of Mediaite, was one of them. He came for the pre-parties. What he found when he tried to get in should have set off alarm bells hours before the shooting did.
He got in with a photo on his phone.
Not a ticket. Not a credentialed badge. Not a verified QR code. Just a screenshot of a real Fox News pre-party invitation — the kind nobody checked, verified, or scanned. DePaolo's point was terrifying: a fraudster with ten minutes and a basic photo editor could have walked in just as easily.
Two separate security personnel took one glance at the image and waved him through.
From there, DePaolo walked straight down an escalator to the network pre-parties. No metal detector. No pat-down. No bag check.
He left at approximately 7:15 p.m. and wrote up what he'd witnessed — a venue-wide security posture he called "downright awful."
Shots were fired 75 minutes later.
A 30-year-old California man charged a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons. Trump confirmed the gunman was taken down by Secret Service.
One officer was struck at close range — saved by a bulletproof vest. The shooter never made it into the ballroom. But he made it close enough to fire what CNN's Wolf Blitzer — standing just feet away — described as "a very serious weapon" at least six times.
The response was right. The prevention was the failure.
The Secret Service Failed Trump at Butler Too
This is not the first time the people responsible for protecting Donald Trump missed something obvious.
On July 13, 2024, a 20-year-old gunman climbed onto a rooftop inside the event perimeter at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and fired eight rounds at the President.
A GAO report confirmed that senior Secret Service officials received classified intelligence about a threat to Trump's life ten days before that rally. They never passed it to the agents actually on the ground.
Senate investigators found the Secret Service had denied or ignored at least ten requests from Trump's detail for additional resources before Butler — including counter-sniper personnel and counter-drone systems.
The director who oversaw Butler resigned in disgrace. Congress spent months on hearings. A bipartisan task force produced 37 recommendations for an agency that had nearly let the President get killed at a campaign rally.
None of it was enough to stop a man from walking up to that checkpoint Saturday night with a loaded weapon.
A Pattern of Secret Service Failures Going Back Decades
The Secret Service does not have a bad-luck problem. It has a complacency problem — and Congress documented it long before Butler.
In November 2011, a gunman fired an assault rifle at the White House, striking the residence at least seven times. Secret Service supervisors called it a gang-related neighborhood shootout.
Four days passed before a housekeeper found bullet holes in the building. Sasha Obama and her grandmother had been inside.
In September 2014, a fence jumper crossed the White House lawn, ran through the open North Portico doors, and reached the East Room before being tackled. The command center alarm was set too low to hear. The White House alarm was muted.
In November 2009, Michaele and Tareq Salahi — uninvited, on no guest list — talked their way through a Secret Service checkpoint at a White House state dinner and shook hands with the President.
The pattern is always the same: the outer perimeter looks serious, the helicopters circle, the motorcades roll — and somewhere inside all of that, somebody stops checking whether the person in front of them is supposed to be there.
That gap Saturday night was the entrance to the Washington Hilton.
DePaolo knew something was wrong when he left at 7:15.
The shooter confirmed it 75 minutes later.
Somebody decided that a quick glance at a phone screen was sufficient security for a building holding the President, the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and the entire Cabinet.
That person needs to be identified. That decision needs to be explained. And the officials who signed off on a security plan where the ballroom had magnetometers but the rest of the building was open to anyone with a party photo on their phone need to answer for it.
Sources:
- Joe DePaolo, "I Was Inside the Washington Hilton Tonight. The Security Was Downright Awful," Mediaite, April 25, 2026.
- Fox News Digital, "President Trump rushed from White House Correspondents' Dinner after shots fired, suspect held," Fox News, April 25, 2026.
- Senate Judiciary Committee, "Grassley Report Concludes Secret Service Failure to Share Threat Information Allowed for Preventable Tragedy in Butler," July 12, 2025.
- Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, "Before Butler Shooting, Secret Service Denied Multiple Requests to Bolster Trump's Security Detail," July 13, 2025.
- House Oversight Committee, "United States Secret Service: An Agency In Crisis," January 2016.