Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust (10 page)

Paul,

I can’t reach Tareq or Michaele Salahi.

Michele S. Jones just called regarding the State
Dinner at the White House for Tuesday, November
24, 2009.

I need the following information from Tareq and Michaele Salahi
immediately
so she can submit their information before 5:00 p.m. today.
Need from Tareq and Michaele Salahi:

Full Name

Social Security Numbers

Date of Birth

Citizenship

This information is very important to be admitted to the White House for anyone.

Please get back to me ASAP. Michele is waiting (sic) a response now.

Thank you

The Salahis are careless about answering their telephones—their Oasis phone line, their main phone or their cell phones—and about returning calls. Tareq, however, is usually prompt in answering e-mails. At 4:33 P.M., just eighteen minutes after Ms. Tyner’s message, Tareq excitedly returned all the required information via e-mail. His America’s Polo Cup Team was set to play the Indian team in their next annual international polo match in June of 2010, so an invite to a state dinner was important to the Salahis on two levels. It would be a great promotion of the faltering team, beset by financial woes and a trail of unpaid bills—and an obvious personal coup for the couple. This was Tareq’s response to his lawyer’s office:

Hi, Team. THANK YOU!!! We are very much looking forward to it!

Full Name: MICHAELE SALAHI
Social Security numbers: xxx-xx-xxxx
Date of Birth: 10-01-65

Citizenship: USA

Full name: TAREQ SALAHI

Social Security Numbers: xxx-xx-xxxx

Date of Birth: 05-26-69

Citizenship: USA

It’s interesting to note within Tareq’s initial response was also the comment, “We are very much looking forward to it!” as if he’s already certain they will be attending. The eagerness with which he and Michaele both embrace events is characteristic of their outgoing personalities. They each come across as consistently childlike in their delight over the positive things in life, expressions of excitement such as hand clapping and jumping up and down with excitement are not unusual for them. The overly optimistic approach is vintage Salahi.

Tareq and Michaele had met Michele Jones a couple months earlier when she made an appearance and delivered a short address at the America’s Polo Cup event on the National Mall. Tradition dictates that members of the Mayor’s office and the White House appear at the opening event to help kick off the annual polo festivities. On September 19
^th
, 2009, Jones was the representative of President Obama’s White House.

Glancing at his watch and realizing the five p.m. deadline to get their information to Jones was fast approaching, Tareq left nothing to chance. He pulled out a business card he obtained from Jones at the polo match, and at 4:37 p.m. he sent an e-mail directly to her. He attached their personal information and flagged the e-mail “high” importance. The subject line read:
State Dinner at the White House/ SS# and DOB in e-mail.

Hi Michele—thank you!!!

We are really looking forward to it.

I am forwarding this to you just in case as additional back up.

 

Cheers,

Tareq Salahi

United States Polo Team Captain

INDIA vs. USA—World Cup 2010 is proud to be hosted on the DC National Mall

June 11 & 12, 2010

Promptly at 4:49 p.m., just twelve minutes after receiving Tareq’s e-mail, Michele Jones wrote back:

Hi Tareq,

Hopefully I can get tickets for the Arrival Ceremony … the State Dinner is completely closed and has been for awhile. As soon as I know, I will contact you.

What is the best way to reach you?

Until then,
Michele.

Ms. Michele S. Jones

Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense

White House Liaison Department of Defense

Tareq realized he was racing against the clock. Government offices often empty out early on Friday afternoons, so he lost no time in responding, three minutes later.

Hi Michele,

Thank you for this.

The best way to reach me is on my direct cell:
202-xxx-xxxx

We are honored to take part of (sic) the Arrival
Ceremony.

Thank you,
Tareq Salahi

The Salahis say that their lawyer, Paul Gardner, called them over the weekend to say, “You are 100% in the receiving line. And Michele Jones is really working to get you into the dinner, too.” Tareq says he also had a series of instant message communications with Gardner over this via Facebook.

“He [Gardner] was patting himself on the back and saying, ‘See what I did for you?’ He was also asking if we would sign a contract with him so he could fully represent Michaele on the
Housewives
business at Bravo. He said he could get her lots of outside endorsements. Naturally, he would get a cut of it.” Tareq says he sent an IM (Instant Message) reply that they would consider the contract. (Paul Gardner, through his publicist, refused repeated requests for an interview.)

It was a giddy weekend. They were going to the White House! Tareq was heartened to see his wife so excited and happy. The couple’s continued anxiety over dealing with his mother in the winery dispute had caused Michaele severe stress. Filming for Half Yard Productions and the TV show sometimes added to it. He could see that preparing to go to the White House caused her spirits to soar.

On Monday, November 23rd, at 11 o’clock in the morning, Tareq wrote again to Michele S. Jones.

Hi Michele,

Hope you had a great weekend.

In preparations for tomorrow, do you know what time we would need to be there and which entrance we should go through?

Are you attending tomorrows (sic) events?

Thank you very much & Cheers

There was no immediate e-mail response from Michele Jones. At 4:12 p.m. the White House liaison wrote back, tossing water on Paul Gardner’s assurance that the Salahis were “100% in the receiving line.”

Tareq,

I am still hoping that I can get tickets for the Arrival Ceremony tomorrow. They do have your information in the event that extra tickets become available and will notify me immediately.

I still haven’t given up, but it doesn’t seem
likely. I have your number with me in the event that I get a call after hours. I am calling Michaele now also, I have been trying to reach out to everyone I can to get them.

Michele

 

At 4:45 that afternoon, the day before the state dinner, Tareq wrote again. He wanted to provide Jones with as much positive incentive to respond as possible. This time the subject line reads:

URGENT: State Dinner / India vs. USA World
Championships will be hosted in Washington DC
2010.

Hi Michele,

Thank you. The USA and INDIA America’s World Cup Championships will be what is recognized as the most significant cultural sporting event between the United States and India strengthening the bilateral relationship we share. Here is the link to the front page of “The Telegraph” in India today.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091123/jsp/frontpage/story_11773787.jsp

Here is a link from the US State Dept/US Embassy in New Delhi discussing how critical these cultural games are to the two nations to strengthen the bi-lateral relationship between the two.

http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/pr070509.html

Thank you,
Tareq Salahi

United States Team Captain

At 4:51 Tareq wrote to Jones yet again, letting her know that he believed there would be some last minute cancellations for the White House event.

Hi Michele,

By the way—I know for a fact these persons are unable to attend the state dinner & the reception portion:

         
1. Senator Harry Reid & his wife (they have gone home early for Thanksgiving)

         
2. Kuma Gupta and husband (unable to travel to DC tomorrow)

         
3. Bob Stevens and his wife (top brass from Lockheed Martin)

Cheers,
Tareq

A few minutes later, at 5:06 p.m., Jones wrote back a one line response:

Thank you sor (sic) the names, this will help also!

Even though Jones obviously meant to write “thank you
for
the names,” this end-of-the-day message buoyed Tareq’s spirits and gave him assurance that everything would turn out. It was the famous Salahi optimism kicking in.

At 8:46 the following morning, Michele Jones wrote to Tareq again about her attempts to get them to the White House. In the subject line she had written:

Arrival Ceremony.
Good Morning Tareq,

The arrival ceremony (was scheduled to be outdoors) was cancelled due to inclement weather. They are having a very small one inside the WH very limited space. I am still working on tickets for tonight’s dinner. I will call or email as soon as I get word one way or another.

Michele

Michele Jones said nothing in that note to indicate they were
not
included in the arrival ceremony. So while anyone else might, at the very least, be confused after getting such an ambiguous email, in Tareq’s mind everything fell in place for attending the arrival event. However, Michele Jones never made it clear that the arrival ceremony she was writing about was taking place that same morning, ten minutes from when she was writing to them. No one had ever mentioned to the Salahis that there were any events scheduled for the morning, so they assumed all the festivities were taking place that night right before the dinner.

Tareq didn’t care about attending the dinner itself; the arrival ceremony would be enough. Like everyone else on the OTR list, he realized that the mere fact of being at a presidential event at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—even for ten minutes—would ensure bragging rights for years.

There were no more e-mail messages between the Jones and the Salahis that day. The couple left their Virginia country house almost immediately after reading Jones’ early morning e-mail that told them the arrival ceremony was being held indoors. They were in a happy whirl of activity throughout the morning, scooping up everything they needed for the White House event—formal clothes, shoes, jewelry.

The plan was to travel the hour and a half into DC and meet the Half Yard Productions camera crew at a Georgetown salon. The crew would be there to capture all the action for an upcoming episode of “
The Real Housewives of D.C.
” even though the show had not yet been officially announced to the public. Michaele would spend the day there filming and getting her hair and makeup done for the big event. The Salahis planned to don their formal wear at the salon before heading over to the White House in a stretch limo.

It is unclear exactly what the Half Yard Productions TV producer knew about the genesis of the Salahis belief that they had been fully invited to the White House. The strict confidentiality agreements required by the network and signed by cast and crew members make it nearly impossible to confirm the facts on this point. But interviews with Erwin Gomez, owner of the Georgetown salon, and Peggy Ioakim (who refers to herself as a “hair artist”) confirm that Peggy asked one question of Michaele, over and over again, while the cameras captured the action.

“I asked her how she got invited, and if I could see the invitation. I asked her several times, in fact.” Michaele couldn’t come up with the invite, but the cameras were rolling, so she made a pretense of looking for it in her purse. At the producers urging, she even went so far as to go out to the car to look for it while the cameras followed.

Asked if Peggy was coached by the producer to repeatedly pose the invitation question—perhaps as a way to embarrass Michaele and make for more compelling television—Peggy responded, “Umm. No, I was just really curious to see it. Erwin and I had been to the White House to work during inauguration and I’d never seen an official invitation.”