The White House described the Sunday event as an "informal reception" hosted by "friends of the president." The event was closed to the media, and reporters trailing the visiting Obama family cooled their heels in an outbuilding, eating guacamole and chips and drinking bottled water.
Comcast Corp. spokeswoman D'Arcy Rudnay said Tuesday: "There's not a lot I can tell you. It was a private event." Rudnay repeated a comment by the White House spokesman that the get-together was not a campaign fund-raiser.
Neither the White House nor Comcast would say how many people attended the reception or what the Robertses served the president. Comcast executive vice president David L. Cohen, an influential Democrat, was there, but Michelle Obama and the two Obama girls, Malia and Sasha, were not.
About 100 people attended a similarly described informal reception for Obama at the Vineyard home of Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree on Saturday, according to news reports. Sources say the Roberts reception may have been a more intimate affair.
Even though details are not being shared, the Obama reception seems the freshest example of a higher profile that Roberts, head of the nation's largest cable/media company, has assumed since Comcast closed its deal for NBC Universal Inc. earlier this year.
In May, Roberts hosted a Philadelphia fund-raising dinner for the Shoah Foundation of Los Angeles that honored film director Steven Spielberg. Roberts jetted to Lausanne, Switzerland, in early June to participate in NBC's bidding for the U.S. broadcast rights for the Olympics. Comcast/NBCU won those rights through 2020 with a stunning bid of more than $4 billion.
Comcast, a company with legislative and regulatory issues teed up in Washington, also seems to be tightening its relations with the Obama administration.
