Salahis threaten to plead the Fifth before Congress

Washington has not heard the last of Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the infamous gatecrashers at President Barack Obama's recent state dinner at the White House. The Virginia socialites were yesterday subpoenaed to appear before a congressional committee on January 20 to explain how and why they breached the president's security.
 
The House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the Secret Service operation to protect the president, voted 26-3 to subpoena the Salahis. It followed the committee chairman Bennie Thompson's failure to get the aspiring reality TV contestants to appear before the panel last week.

The Salahis are proving difficult to pin down: their lawyer, Stephen Best, has told the committee that the couple will plead the Fifth - the right to stay silent to prevent incriminating themselves.

An amendment to subpoena Desiree Rogers, President Obama's glamorous social secretary, was rejected 17 to 12. The senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, had argued that if someone in Rogers's office - which was in charge of the Obamas' first state dinner and drew up the guest list - had been working alongside Secret Service agents on the evening of November 24, the Salahis might never have got through the White House front door in the first place.

The observation has been made in Washington that Desiree Rogers considers herself so grand - she was a social equal of the First Couple when they were all in Chicago together - that such details are beneath her.

Meanwhile another minor controversy surrounding the Salahis unravelled on Tuesday.

Last Friday, the Salahis appeared before a district court in Virginia to explain why they had not paid their landscape gardener $2,000 they owed him. The judge, mindful of the steady stream of stories emerging about the couple - including Michaele gatecrashing a reunion of Washington Redskins cheerleaders, and questions about phantom sponsors of the couple's Polo Cup tournament - ordered Tareq Salahi to hand over the Pateke Philippe watch on his wrist.

There was a catch, however - the watch, worth several thousand dollars, turned out not to be working. Only after the court sent it off to be fixed - and to have its authenticity verified - did Tareq come up on Tuesday with a certified cheque for his gardener.

He said the watch was not broken but would only start ticking again after it had been worn for 30 minutes. As Washington is discovering, Tareq Salahi has an answer for everything. ·