Washinton:
Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple accused of crashing a White House state dinner a week ago, tried to bring a reality television camera crew to a lavish Washington fundraiser featuring President Barack Obama two months before that, officials said Tuesday.
The couple was being filmed for "The Real Housewives of D.C.," a coming show on the Bravo cable channel, on the day they attended the event, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual awards dinner on Sept. 26. They were escorted from the event when members of the security staff discovered that they did not have tickets, said a foundation spokeswoman, Muriel Cooper.
The "Housewives" crew also followed the Salahis as they prepared for the state dinner on Nov. 24. The couple managed to slip past the Secret Service and meet Obama, prompting a continuing investigation by the agency.
But in their first television interview since the incident, the Salahis insisted that they did not "party crash" and said they would soon explain their version of events.
"We were invited," Michaele Salahi said on the "Today" show on NBC, a sister network of Bravo.
But when Matt Lauer, the interviewer, asked, "Who invited you?" the couple did not answer. Instead, Tareq Salahi said: "One of the things that we're doing is we're working closely with the Secret Service in their internal investigation. We're respecting their timeline. We're working on their timeline. We want to get through that process."
Tareq Salahi added that they had "turned over documentation" to the Secret Service, which might have been a reference to e-mail messages between the couple and Michele S. Jones, a special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates who serves as a liaison to the White House.
On Monday it was reported that the Salahis tried to obtain tickets to the state dinner through Jones, but that she was not in a position to give them access.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that in the e-mail exchange, the couple told Jones that they went to the dinner without a confirmed invitation, in case they got approved at the last minute.
According to the AP, the Salahis said a dead cell phone battery prevented them from hearing a voicemail earlier that day advising them that they did not make the guest list.
In a separate interview on "Today," the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, dismissed the notion that there was a misunderstanding between the Salahis and government officials.
"You don't show up at the White House as a misunderstanding," Gibbs said. He added that the incident was "being looked at criminally."
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the White House social office would go back to making sure that one of its staff members will be present at the gates to help the Secret Service if questions come up. The first lady's communication director, Camille Johnston, told the AP that this has been an existing policy, but the White House and Secret Service have said that no such person was present last week as guests arrived for the dinner.
The Salahis are presumptive cast members on "The Real Housewives of D.C.," and Bravo confirmed Tuesday that the Salahis had signed a contract for the "Housewives" taping, a standard procedure for reality shows.
The channel, which normally does not identify its cast members until filming concludes, said that it had not made final decisions about casting for the show. It said that production on the series was continuing, refuting an online report that the state dinner incident would be the season finale.
Asked whether the channel's local camera crew would film the Salahis in the future, a spokeswoman said that "specifics with respect to the Salahis are yet to be determined."
Although the couple said Tuesday that they were not paid for the appearance on "Today," they could profit considerably from their contract with Bravo. Raising the ire of some television critics and media commentators, Lauer did not disclose the couple's relationship with Bravo or ask any questions about their reality TV aspirations.
Such disclosures about corporate siblings are common on news shows owned by media companies. NBC News would not comment on the omission, but in a statement, a spokeswoman said: "Bravo had nothing to do with this booking, they were not involved at all. That the Salahis chose to go on the No.1-rated morning show should not come as a surprise."
In the interview, the Salahis said their lives had "been destroyed" in the days after the state dinner, when they and their record of lawsuits and unpaid bills came under media scrutiny.
Asked by Lauer about the foundation dinner in September, Tareq Salahi said, "We were escorted out? Of course not."