The Secret Service has investigated approximately 10,000 threats to its protectees — including President Trump — in the first half of this year, the head of the agency revealed Wednesday.
“The numbers are numbers that this agency and certainly I have never seen in my 24-year career,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran told reporters in a briefing ahead of Friday night’s rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“The environment has become very volatile, and that’s just across the board,” added Curran. “The threat picture and environment is as large as I’ve ever seen it.”
By comparison, the Secret Service had opened around 7,000 investigations during the same period in 2025.
The agency is responsible for the security of roughly three dozen protectees, including the president and vice president, their immediate families, and those in the presidential line of succession.
Officials said most of the threats the Secret Service investigates originate online and all reports are treated as potentially credible until agents can determine whether the subject has the intent, means and ability to actually carry out an attack.
The black-tie correspondents’ dinner was rescheduled from April 25, when authorities say Cole Allen stormed a Secret Service checkpoint carrying two guns and four knives with the intent to kill Trump and as many members of his cabinet as possible.
Allen was captured after exchanging fire with law enforcement officers, striking one in their bulletproof vest.
On Wednesday, Curran defended the security setup at the Washington Hilton, noting that Allen was apprehended 120 yards from where Trump was due to speak that night.
“We have to start and end our perimeter somewhere,” he said. “If it were up to me, I’d love to end it at the bridge, but that’s going to inconvenience a lot of people.”
“We do expect things to happen at the magnetometers, unfortunately, but that’s why they are there,” Curran added. “And that’s where it happened, and that’s where it ended. So it did work. The system worked.”
In a manifesto sent to family members minutes before the attack, Allen, who had checked into the hotel the day before the dinner, mocked what he called “insane” holes in the protective footprint.
“The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before,” he wrote. “Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.”
Friday’s dinner will be held at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, located steps from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. The venue’s Presidential Ballroom has space for about 1,300 seated guests, just over half the roughly 2,500 who gathered at the Hilton in April.
Trump is scheduled to attend and give remarks at the dinner, which White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang said would feature “significantly enhanced safety measures and new access procedures.”
As The Post reported last week, digital tickets will be used to grant admission — rather than the usual paper passes — and will be checked before attendees are allowed to approach the magnometers.
News outlets also will not be throwing any pre-dinner cocktail parties, which could be accessed by anyone who could produce an invitation even if they didn’t have a dinner ticket.
