Jake Paul Dishes on Secret Service Busting Him During ‘Illegal’ White House Sleepover Stunt
YouTuber and pro boxer Jake Paul spoke candidly about being intimidated by the Secret Service to take a video down from his channel.
On Thursday, Paul spoke with comedian Andrew Schulz on his podcast Flagrant to discuss his career and his rise to stardom as a YouTuber.
While Jake was climbing the ranks of YouTube success, he was invited to attend an influencer event at the White House in 2017, by the invitation of former President Barack Obama. The guests were all social media influencers who were given permission to share their experience with their followers by filming videos and taking pictures while on the grounds.
But Paul, now a professional boxer, has always had a competitive side and quickly conjured up a plan to make his video stand out amongst the rest.
“I was just like, hey, all these influencers are going here. There’s 30 of them. They’re all gonna be making a vlog. And I thought to myself, how could I make my vlog better than theirs? I’m gonna sleep in the White House,” he said.
“So I snuck away into a bathroom and just stood in there until like 4:00 or 5:00 AM,” he recalled to Schulz.
“And nobody noticed nothing?” Schulz asked.
“Not a peep … I walk out the front door and posted the video. And that’s when they found out,” Paul said.
The video, uploaded to Paul’s YouTube channel was titled WHITE HOUSE 24 HR OVERNIGHT CHALLENGE, currently boasting over 13 million views. It reflected a popular trend on the platform at that time which showed many popular influencers attempting to spend the night in stores like Target, Walmart, and even public attractions like malls and zoos.
The video quickly gained traction from fans and soon caught the attention of the Secret Service.
“They showed up at my front door … Like the actual Secret Service showed up,” Paul added. “They just tried to intimidate me and be like, ‘Take the video down or else. And this, this is a terrible representation. And we’re disgraced that you did this and you’re never gonna be able to come back to the White House and you need to take the video down right now.’ I was like, ‘I had permission to be there. I had permission to film. I’m sorry. I’m not taking the video down.'”
Paul’s own father, Greg Paul, even stepped in to defend his son against them.
“Greg Paul was there and he goes ‘You should be thanking him. He found the flaw in your fucking system,'” Paul said.
He added that there was only a six or seven hour window between him uploading the video and Secret Service arriving at his front door.
Listen above via Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant with Akaash Singh.
