Last night, the e-mails between Michaele and Tareq Salahi and Defense Department official Michele Jones were released. According to the string of e-mails, in which the Salahis appealed for invitations to the White House’s first State Dinner, the couple were told on the day of the event that it “doesn’t seem likely” that they’d be able to attend. Jones said she’d call or e-mail to let them know, and did call, telling them they weren’t on the list. But the aspiring reality stars showed up anyway, trying first at the driving entrance, where they were turned away because they weren’t on the list. They later tried the pedestrian entrance, where they managed to talk their way past a Secret Service officer. Later, they claimed to have not received the phone message from Jones, and crowed in an e-mail to her at one in the morning: “You are an angel! … 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!”
But according to the Secret Service and the office of the Social Secretary, they were never on the list. The Salahis are either deluded or outright lying.
Which may be a habit for the couple. Today the Washington Post looks closely at their main charitable pursuit, the annual Land Rover America’s Polo Cup. The event benefits a charity run by the Salahis, “Journey for the Cure,” and features a polo match between a U.S. team (for which Tareq is the captain) and a team from India — it’s the reason they appealed for entrance into the State dinner with India in the first place. But according to tax receipts, the 2007 event (which they claimed raised $250,000 for charity) only brought in around $18,000 and ended with a charitable outlay of around $15,000. And for the past three years, sponsors and vendors have been so mistreated or unpaid that many of the vendors listed for the 2010 event — including headline sponsor Land Rover — are not actually onboard. According to the Post, some $500,000 in bills have gone unpaid for the events.
You’ll recall that Michaele Salahi has already been accused of lying about being a Redskins cheerleader. But hey, she’s now been compared to Barack Obama in a column by Maureen Dowd. Which is probably more than even she would have invented in her own wildest fantasies.
Crash Cover Blown [NYP]
A new field of inquiry: Salahis’ polo cup [WP]
