The pretentious party couple who crashed President Obama’s first state dinner admitted that they trolled around the White House without a confirmed invite in the hopes of getting last-minute approval, according to e-mails released yesterday.
Michele Jones, a special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, repeatedly told Tareq and Michaele Salahi in e-mails that they were not on the guest list and that it “doesn’t seem likely” they would be able to attend.
On the day of the dinner, last Tuesday, Jones told the couple she would call or e-mail them “one way or another” to let them know.
Sometime that day, Jones left them a message telling them they weren’t on the list.
It didn’t stop the Salahis.
In a crowing e-mail to Jones after hobnobbing, uninvited, with President Obama and other VIPs at the White House — the Salahis claimed they never got the message because their cellphone battery died.
“You are an angel!” they gushed in an e-mail sent at 1:03 a.m.
“I just got your message now . . . But obviously, it worked out at the end . . . We ended up going to the gate to check in at 6:30 p.m. to just check, in case it got approved, since we didn’t know, and our name was indeed on the list!”
The Secret Service has said their names were not on the list.
Apparently unconcerned about how they entered the supposedly secure event, Jones responded, “I here [sic] the smile in your e-mail and am delighted that you and Michaele had a wonderful time. :-)”
The Salahis — who are vying for a spot on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of DC”– denied on NBC’s “Today Show” that they had done anything wrong.
“I can tell you we did not party-crash the White House,” Tareq Salahi said.
A somber Michaele added, “We were invited, not crashers, and there isn’t anyone who would have the audacity or the poor behavior to do that. No one would do that, and certainly not us.”
The Secret Service will change some of its screening policies because of the breach, a government official said.