Legal News

White House Party Crashers No Stranger to the Court System

By Ashby Jones

Shortly after word broke that Michaele and Tareq Salahi had crashed President Obama's first state dinner, we were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Kind of funny, we thought. Kind of harmless, when all was said and done. Kind of renegade in a Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson sort of way.

But the more that we hear about them, the harder it is to think that some deeper pathology isn’t at play here. The latest not-so-flattering dose of information comes courtesy of the Washington Post, which on Wednesday provides a look at the duo’s recent (and extensive) legal scrapes. Click here for the story.

According to the WaPo:

Before they gained international notoriety by walking into the White House without an invitation, Tareq and Michaele Salahi were well known inside courthouses all around the capital area. A review of court records shows that more than 30 lawsuits in Virginia and Maryland have been filed against one or both of the Salahis, or a company they ran, since 2004. Some cases are pending, and some were settled out of court. Many times the judges ordered the couple to pay their bills but they haven’t yet. In rare cases, the Salahis won.

For the most part, according to the story, the legal troubles stem from the Salahis desire to create "for themselves a fantastic world of champagne bubbles and fashion, famous friends and jet-setting good times," when, in fact, "the reality was far different."

Take, for instance, the tales of three couples who held their weddings at the Salahi family’s Oasis. They all sued the vineyard, saying large and unexpected charges showed up on their wedding bills.

“It was devastating at the time,” said Marybeth Wootton, who said she ended up paying $20,000 in legal fees on top of a $55,000 wedding. According to the WaPo, she said her 2006 wedding turned out to be a $600-a-person event — three times as much as expected.

All, it seems, to fund their lavish lifestyle. They had an addiction to a lifestyle they couldn’t afford,” said Cammie Copps Fuller, a florist who sued and got $2,000 of the $3,000 she said they owed her for their wedding flowers. “Karma — call it what you will — caught up to them.”

The Salahis did not respond to repeated attempts for comment by the WaPo. And that's a shame, because the story is one big damning portrait of untruth, The details are fantastic: A 2005 Aston Martin repossessed in 2008; a dress worn to a polo event returned to Tysons Corner weeks later "still slightly muddied even after a stop at the dry cleaner"; repeated claims of being victimized by police officers and others.

Said one detective quoted in the story: “I am sure a lot of people weren’t surprised when people saw their picture that night they went to the White House.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 23, 2009 (boomark / email).