WASHINGTON — A lawyer for the alleged “third crasher” says his client went to the White House state dinner after receiving an invitation in the mail, contrary to official claims.
Scott Bolden, a veteran Washington defense attorney with the firm Reed Smith, did not provide details about how Carlos Allen came to attend nor did he provide evidence of an invitation. The Secret Service is investigating because Allen was not on the official guest list.
Allen, 39, is publisher of a fledgling online society magazine whose party house has drawn complaints from his neighbors. He also once socialized with Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the original unexpected White House guests.
On Monday, six weeks after the Salahis triggered an international scandal by crashing the state dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Secret Service divulged that a third person also made it in without credentials: a man whom sources later identified to The Washington Post as Carlos Allen. His appearance at the Nov. 24 event — arriving with the official Indian delegation that had been screened by the State Department, according to the agency — exposed a new area of weakness in White House security after that revealed by the Salahis, who walked in with authorized attendees through the main entrance.
Allen initially denied to reporters that he had attended the dinner or that he was the man being investigated.
