The Virginia couple who breezed into last week’s Washington state dinner without an invitation said yesterday that they were “shocked and devastated” at being branded White House party crashers.
Looking more aggrieved than contrite, Tareq and Michaele Salahi broke a week’s public silence to insist that they were invited to the dinner — at which they succeeded in meeting President Obama — and that the American public would be “extremely surprised” when details emerged to support their claim.
Those details are thought to consist of an e-mail exchange between the Salahis and Michele Jones, a Pentagon liaison with the White House, who they approached asking for an invitation to the event, which was held in honour of the Indian Prime Minister.
Ms Jones issued a statement through the White House saying she specifically told the Salahis that they did not have tickets to any part of the evening’s activities and that, in any case, she “did not have the authority to authorise attendance, admittance or access”. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said: “You don’t show up at the White House as a misunderstanding.”
Mrs Salahi told NBC’s Today Show: “We were invited. Not crashers. There isn’t anyone who would have the audacity or the poor behaviour to do that.”
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Asked who invited them, Mr Salahi deferred to the investigation now under way into their actions. “We’re working with the Secret Service. We’re respecting their timeline and everything they are doing,” he said.
The Salahis denied that they had been ejected from another exclusive Washington soir?e last month. According to reports, they gained entrance to the Congressional Black Caucus dinner, also attended by Mr Obama, but were thrown out when a guest complained that they did not belong at his table.
Mrs Salahi is hoping for a role on a forthcoming reality TV series, Real Housewives of Washington DC, produced by a subsidiary of NBC, which broadcast yesterday’s interview.
She and her husband denied receiving any payment for the interview and said of the past week: “Our lives have really been destroyed.”