White House Party Crashers May Face Criminal Charges

White House Party Crashers Michaele Salahi FacebookDaphne Eviatar reports that the two people who crashed a state dinner last week may be facing criminal charges. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr explains the most likely legal theories for it.

I’ve no doubt that the party crashers most likely broke the law, but I think that a Federal prosecution is absurd.

I thought that this stunt was cheeky and fun. Nobody was hurt. Nothing was harmed except the pride of some security officials, which is something I can live with.

Should the Secret Service investigate to find out how the party crashers got in? Absolutely. But prosecuting them is a waste of time and resources and pretty unjust, to boot.

FILED UNDER: Law and the Courts, US Politics, , ,
Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. JKB says:

    Yes, it would be a brilliant move to highlight that if you embarrass a politician or federal employee you will be thrown in jail. We could find out if the security arbitrarily dropped the ball or if the Staff were pushing for them to stop questioning visitors. Wouldn’t it be brilliant to discover they were walked in by a ranking staff member unknowingly?

  2. Prosecution is often a path to counseling. And in this case it would provide the wider “teaching moment” about reality show psychosis.

  3. PJens says:

    The party crashes should not be prosecuted, especially since the DOJ is not going to investigate or prosecute ACORN for fraud.

  4. Steve Verdon says:

    Well contempt of cop is a crime (at least in the minds of cops).

  5. JVB says:

    I’d settle for some honest-to-God investigation into just how well they actually know Obama…follow the trail…and then remember to keep it all TRANSPARENT to the public. Yeah…that’ll happen.

  6. Mike says:

    They clearly violated the law of “don’t violate a good bureacracy” by showing that the millions upon millions of dollars we spend on the secret service and security can’t withstand a good looking, well dressed couple walking in to have dinner with the president. Secret Service, you messed up, move on. “contempt of cop” – love that, haven’t heard it before but very true.

  7. Our Paul says:

    Roy Edroso has been kind enough to put together a compilation of the Center Right outrage over this event, especially proving that the Palestinians are at it again…