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For two weeks before an intruder broke through security at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., the Secret Service had been investigating a mystery shooting near the White House but had come up emptyhanded – to the frustration of both President Trump and top Department of Homeland Security officials – multiple Secret Service sources told RealClearPolitics.

Just after midnight early in the morning after Easter Sunday, Secret Service Uniformed Division officers responded to a shooting near the White House and D.C.’s Lafayette Park, but the Secret Service couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the shot landed. The Secret Service investigated and found rifle shell casings at 16th and I Streets, and a video located the shooter’s vehicle but no images of the gunman.

The Secret Service conducted a search of the park, which was fenced for repairs, and didn’t find a suspect. The agency publicly noted that it had heightened its security posture around the White House in response to the shooting.

The Secret Service publicly said it was looking for a possible vehicle and a person of interest, but that was not the full truth, according to two Secret Service sources. The Secret Service had pinpointed the vehicle the shooter used, but it ended up having stolen plates so the agency couldn’t track it to any identifying information about the shooter, and the case went cold.

President Trump continued to want answers, but the Secret Service didn’t fully inform him or others at the White House about all they had uncovered in the probe.

The Secret Service didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry asking why the investigation into the shooting two weeks ago went cold. The agency also didn’t say whether that shooting was related to last night’s shooting at the Washington Hilton, the site of President Reagan's shooting 45 years ago that wounded Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and Metropolitan Police officer Thomas Delahanty. 

“They were downplaying the incident,” one source told RCP. “I think they didn’t want to upset [Trump]. He doesn’t know all the details.”

“The stolen plates threw a wrench into the investigation,” the source added. “The park is closed and with all the buildings echoing the noise of the gunshot, it’s hard to pinpoint anything.”

That was just two weeks before a shooter was able to charge past a Secret Service checkpoint outside the WHCA dinner’s ballroom, exchange gunfire with officers, was tackled, and never reached the president or anyone else at the main event.

Officials confirmed that the suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, rushed the checkpoint at 8:36 p.m. carrying a shotgun, a........

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