Chatty White House party crashers turn mum on Capitol Hill
The most famous party crashers (hint red sari and tux) who so gaily chatted with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at a swank White House state dinner in November (photos still proudly displayed on Facebook), clammed up when they attended a different event on Capitol Hill Wednesday.
In fact, Tareq and Michaele Salahi were decidedly not engaging in conversation with members of Congress at the House Homeland Security Committee hearing and basically had only one line for them:
“On advice of counsel I respectfully assert my right to remain silent and decline to answer your question,” he said, and she repeated.
One lawmaker had enough of the one-liners. “Let me ask you a question, were you there?”
When Tareq Salahi started to repeat his refrain, Congressman William Pascrell interrupted with: “Are you here today Mr. Salahi? Are you here right now?”
Salahi looked around with a slight smile as if unsure how to answer that one.
Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Michaele Salahi at congressional hearing)
The First Draft: White House takes a lonely road to openness on Crasher-gate
President Barack Obama’s senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, feels the White House doesn’t need Congress to help it maintain openness on the Crasher-gate scandal. That’s why it’s chosen to eschew the limelight of a Capitol Hill hearing today.
“We think we’ve really answered the questions fully,” she told ABC’s Good Morning America, while making the TV rounds to defend a White House decision not to send its social secretary to explain how a Virginia couple got into last week’s state dinner without an invitation.
“Having a full review up on the (White House) Web site, where everyone in the country — anyone who goes on our Web site — can read it, is the definition of transparency.”
By “full review,” she meant a one-page memo outlining new White House staff procedures intended to prevent any future pair of gate-crashers like Michaele Salahi and husband Tareq from getting through the security cordon.
Jarrett’s is an interesting assertion. Obama has made a point to enhance public access to the government after eight years of unprecedented official secrecy under George W. Bush and his powerful veep, Dick Cheney.
The crux of the matter seems to be that not everyone agrees Crasher-gate is so important. The House Homeland Security Committee, which is hosting today’s hearing, thinks it a big enough deal. The Salahis weren’t an al Qaeda hit squad armed with poison lipstick or .50 caliber ink pens. They might have been, however, so why shouldn’t Congress hear from everybody?
But Jarrett says having U.S. Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan testify should be enough. It is the Secret Service, after all, that’s responsible for White House security. And once the agency completes its own investigation, those findings will get posted on the Web, too.
How does the couple slipping into the Whitehouse, uninvited, compare to the war,
economy, health care, and the climate. He has already admitted it was a security blunder, and has been open about ALL of it!! The decision was not to try to jail them and why!! How much more “open” can you get for God’s sake?!!!
Latest on crasher-gate: will they accept House invite?
It’s not quite the glamorous soiree they attended at the White House, but the party-crashing duo has been invited to a different Washington function.
Will they RSVP and accept the invitation? No one knows.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson plans to hold a hearing on Thursday about the breach of security at the White House last week when Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashed the State Dinner for the Indian prime minister and hobnobbed with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
“The Committee plans to invite testimony from Mr. and Mrs. Salahi, who managed to attend portions of the State Dinner without proper White House and Secret Service clearance,” a statement from Thompson said.
Michaele Salahi has flirty, flirty, photos from the White House dinner on her Facebook page — cosy with the Veep, leaning toward Rahm (Emanuel, who she mistags as “Ron” on one picture), hanging with the Marines.
And she touched the president, grasping Obama’s hand in both of hers in the receiving line.
So will the couple who is the talk of the town show up at the House hearing?
I would ask them if they know the balloon people from Colorado
I plead the fifth.