Biden Team Sorry for Sticking Reporter in Closet

ABC News reports:

"Scott - You have our sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room today," wrote Vice President Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander last Wednesday to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers.

"Lack of a better hold room" is an interesting way of putting it. In order to keep Powers from mingling with guests at a Democratic fundraiser last Wednesday, Powers was escorted into a storage closet by a Biden staffer.

Powers was the designated pool reporter, there to record the proceedings for the press corps in general.

He told ABC News that he showed up at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday to cover Vice President Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., attending a $500-a-head fundraiser at the Winter Park manse of developer Alan Ginsburg.

A young female staffer met him at the door and brought him to the storage closet.

"You're going to have to wait in here until the VP gets here," he says she told him.

"You're kidding me," he recalls responding.

Forcing reporters into closets is generally not the tradition of politicians in the US. Powers is a respected politics and business reporter who recently wrote about the Space shuttle Discovery coming home to Kennedy Space Center for the 39th and final time.

Making matters worse, Biden didn't arrive until more than an hour later.

Continued Alexander in her email to Powers: "I am told, once the Vice President and Senator Nelson arrived, the situation was quickly rectified – and hopefully you weren’t waiting too long."