A Congressional committee is set to vote to subpoena the Salahis who gate-crashed president Barack Obama's first State Dinner for prime minister Manmohan Singh, amid reports that the Virginia couple could invoke their right to silence if forced to appear before the panel.

The move comes after Tareq and Michele Salahi refused to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security last week on the gate-crashing incident and respond to the questions of the lawmakers.
    
Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the Committee, had scheduled for today the vote on issuing of subpoena for the Salahis
    
"The Salahis chose to forego participation in proceedings with the full knowledge that the committee could compel their testimony through subpoenas," Thompson had said last week.

"My door remains open and I'm hopeful that they will be as willing to talk to Congress as they have been to talk to the media," he had said at the end of the hearing convened to discuss the issue of the couple attending the November 24 event at White House, despite not having any invite.

Meanwhile, media reports said if forced to appear before the Congressional committee, the Salahis would invoke their right to silence.

Salahis' lawyer Stephen Best told the local Belfast Telegraph that the House Committee on Homeland Security had drawn premature conclusions about the November 24 incident.

He cited District of Columbia delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton's characterisation of the Salahis on November 30 as "practised con artists", the daily said.

Thompson's chief oversight counsel had told the Salahis' lawyer that if the couple did not testify at the original December 3 hearing, they would be viewed as modern-day versions of "Bonnie and Clyde", the daily said.
    
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the bank robbers who operated in the central United States during the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted till 1939. A movie titled Bonnie and Clyde was also made in 1967 based on their lives.

"It is circumstances such as these (wherein Salahis could be asked to testify) for which the Fifth Amendment of the US
Constitution was designed to provide safe harbour," Best was quoted as saying.

The Fifth Amendment dictates the government cannot force an American to incriminate himself.