The man who some say is the third White House gatecrasher defends his honor, telling INSIDE EDITION he was invited to the November 24th state dinner.
The man accused of being the third White House gatecrasher is defending his honor to INSIDE EDITION
"Did the White House send you an invitation to the state dinner?" INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd asks Carlos Allen.
"Yes, they did," Allen says.
But Allen is facing tough new questions about how he got into the state dinner infamously crashed by the Salahis because the Secret Service says his name was never on the guest list.
"I felt that I had a legitimate invitation to go to the White House with," Allen says.
Allen showed INSIDE EDITION what he says is the invitation he received from the White House. But INSIDE EDITION compared Allen's invite to an official invitation, the one sent to the managing editor of The Washington Post. Each official invitation has the guest's name engraved on it.
Closer inspection of Allen's invitation reveals a marked similarity not to the official invitation, but to the cover of the evening's entertainment program. A copy of the program was handed out to everyone sitting at a table, including to Allen.
"The invitation looks nothing like an actual invitation that guests received. How do you explain that?" Paul Boyd asks.
"I don't know. As far as the invitation, that invitation that I used, which I felt was a legitimate invitation, is what I used to get into the White House with," Allen says.
Allen's lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, jumps to his defense.
"This is what he received, he'd never been invited to the White House before, so he took what he believed to be an invitation. He presented it two or three times that night," the attorney says.
Allen says the Secret Service waved him into the White House when he hitched a ride on a bus along with members of the delegation from India.
"You name it, I did it. I took pictures with everybody and I talked to everyone," Allen says proudly.
He says a White House staffer seated him at the dinner, which his lawyer says is proof he was invited.
"The fact your client was not thrown out of the party does not mean he was invited," Boyd points out.
"Oh, I think you're dead wrong about that. Because if he wasn't invited he would have been escorted out of the White House, let alone not even gotten in," Bolden says.
The White House and the Secret Service have declined to comment on Allen's story, pending a criminal investigation.
"Surely you understand though, that It looks like you crashed the White House state dinner," says Boyd.
"Well, that's your opinion," Allen says. "I did not crash the state dinner. So your opinion and my opinion are totally different."
First Lady Michelle Obama is downplaying the gatecrasher incident, saying at the end of the day, it would just be a footnote to a wonderful state dinner
