House Democrats put complete trust in a gang of Pakistani crooks 394
… who exploited them, cheated them, robbed them, mocked them, and seriously endangered them, the government, and the nation.
It’s not fake news. It really happened.
From the Daily Caller, April 1, 2018:
Every one of the 44 House Democrats who hired Pakistan-born IT aides who later allegedly made “unauthorized access” to congressional data appears to have chosen to exempt them from background checks, according to congressional documents.
All of them appear to have waived background checks on Imran Awan and his family members, even though the family of server administrators could collectively read all the emails and files of 1 in 5 House Democrats, and despite background checks being recommended for such positions, according to an inspector general’s report. But it also includes a loophole allowing them to simply say that another member vouched for them.
No background checks? So what sort of people were the Awans? What could have been found out about them? What reputations did they have?
Among the red flags in Abid’s background were a $1.1 million bankruptcy; six lawsuits against him or a company he owned; and at least three misdemeanor convictions including for DUI and driving on a suspended license, according to Virginia court records. Public court records show that Imran and Abid operated a car dealership, referred to the CIA, that took $100,000 from an Iraqi government official who is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Numerous members of the family were tied to cryptic LLCs [Limited Liability Companies] such as New Dawn 2001, operated out of Imran’s residence, Virginia corporation records show. Imran was the subject of repeated calls to police by multiple women [complaining of abuse] and had multiple misdemeanor convictions for driving offenses, according to court records.
How did they exploit their position and betray the trust reposed in them?
If a screening had caught those, what officials say happened next might have been averted. The House inspector general reported on Sept. 20, 2016, that shortly before the election members of the group were logging into servers of members they didn’t work for, logging in using congressmen’s personal usernames, uploading data off the House network, and behaving in ways that suggested “nefarious purposes” and that “steps are being taken to conceal their activity”.
A pair of closely-held reports on Imran Awan, his brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina Alvi, and his friend Rao Abbas, said, “the shared employees have not been vetted (e.g. background check).”
Were they highly qualified and thoroughly experienced?
No.
“Shared employees” means they were all hired as part-time, individual employees by individual members, cobbling together $165,000 salaries. Jamal began making that salary at only 20 years old, according to House payroll records; Abid never went to college, his stepmother said; and Rao Abbas’ most recent job experience was being fired from McDonald’s, according to his roommate. (“Whether they had formal training or not, they were trained on the job by Imran,” one of Imran’s lawyers said.)
Who first brought them into the confidence of the House Democrats?
Among the 44 employers, the primary advocate for the suspects has been Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who … was also chair of the Democratic National Committee when Wikileaks published its emails. (The Wikileaks emails show that DNC aides called Imran when they needed the password to her device.) Since then, she and other Democrats have described cyber breaches in the strongest possible terms, such as “an act of war” and “an assault on our democracy.”
But there is no indication Democrats put those concerns into practice when they entrusted the Pakistani dual citizens with their data, nor when suspicious activity was detected.
Once the crooks had been rumbled, did the Dems who’d employed them at least take immediate steps to find out how much damage they’d done and repair it as best they could?
Well, Debbie didn’t. She kept Imran in his job.
Police banned the suspects from the network after the IG report, but Wasserman Schultz kept Imran on staff anyway. He was in the building and in possession of a laptop with the username RepDWS months later, according to an April 6, 2017 police report.
Was there no security policy that could have prevented this outrage, or at least discovered it sooner?
The House security policy, HISPOL16, says “House Offices shall… ensure background checks, as defined in this policy, have been conducted on Privileged Users”. It includes quarterly reviews of privileged accounts’ appropriateness. By the time the policy was enacted, some members had dropped the Awans for assorted reasons …
What reasons? None given, except –
… including Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in early 2015 for what her spokesperson called “incompetence”.
So they weren’t even competent at the job they were paid to do by the Representatives? Kyrsten Sinema may not have been able to judge that. “Incompetence” was probably just her excuse for dismissing the Awans. The real reason seems to be was that she was afraid of them. So were they all – all the Democratic Representatives who irresponsibly entrusted their computers to the Awan gang.
… The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to all 44 members, and none disputed that they had not conducted a background check. Not a single one of the 44 would say which of their colleagues vouched for the Awans, nor stated what criteria they used to determine that it was prudent to give them access to all their data.
Besides Wasserman Schultz, Imran has longstanding personal relationships with Reps. Gregory Meeks and Marcia Fudge of New York, Politico reported.
“Personal relationships”? He was their friend?
Employers also include Rep. Ted Lieu of California on the Foreign Affairs Committee and three members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: Reps. Andre Carson of Indiana, Jackie Speier of California and Joaquin Castro of Texas. …
Two of their employers said not a word when they were robbed by the Awans.
The Awans’ employers also included Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, who saw $120,000 in computer equipment disappear under Abid Awan’s watch but “wrote off” the taxpayer funds rather than make an issue of it, according to the IG report and multiple senior government officials.
Xavier Becerra, now attorney general of California, ran the House Democratic Caucus, and his server was physically stolen shortly after the IG report named it as evidence in a hacking probe, three senior government officials said.
But wait, there’s more:
The Daily Caller reported on October 2, 2017:
A now-indicted IT aide to various House Democrats was sending money and gifts to government officials in Pakistan and received protection from the Pakistani police, multiple relatives claim.
A Democratic aide also said Imran Awan personally bragged to him that he could have people tortured in Pakistan. Awan’s lawyer acknowledged that he was sending money to a member of the Faisalabad police department, but said there was a good explanation.
The relatives said Awan and his brothers were also sending IT equipment, such as iPhones, to the country during the same period in which fraudulent purchase orders for that equipment were allegedly placed in the House, and in which congressional equipment apparently went missing.
Awan’s stepmother, Samina Gilani, said the brothers were paying police officer Azhar Awan and that he is their cousin.
Facebook confirms that Azhar works for the police and is Facebook “friends” with the former congressional aides, who worked for 45 Democratic House members until the aides were banned Feb. 2, following the discovery of 5,400 unauthorized logins to congressional servers and the funneling of “massive” amounts of data off the congressional network. …
A fellow Democratic House IT aide … recounted a conversation between Awan and three colleagues in a House cafeteria several years ago in which Awan seemed to relish bragging about his ability to have people harassed in Pakistan.
“He wanted to build a CRM [customer relationship management software] but he wanted to do it in Pakistan,” the aide told TheDCNF. “But the government doesn’t allow that. They have to be American, but Imran said, ‘Well, we can say that they’re American, but really they’ll be in Pakistan. I have these guys that work for the Faisalabad police department, and all we have to do is pay them $100 a month and they take them over to the police station, strip their clothes off, hang them upside down and beat them with a shoe. And that person will work hard and be loyal from then on.’ …
In early 2016, $120,000 in equipment, including iPads, were discovered missing from the office of Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, for which Abid ran IT. Equipment billed to other congressional offices was shipped to their house, and invoices were falsified to show prices as $499 — just under the cutoff at which equipment would be inventoried by central administrators. …
Awan’s younger brothers Abid and Jamal were also on the House payroll, but have not been charged with any crimes. …
According to one witness:
Imran Awan introduces himself [in Pakistan] as someone from U.S. Congress or federal agencies … [so that he] manages to have police to escort him during his visits to Pakistan.”
But:
The Washington Post reported that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was investigating the Awans, but that “according to a senior congressional official familiar with the probe, criminal investigators have found no evidence that the IT workers had any connection to a foreign government”.
If true, that raises questions about how thoroughly agents have probed.
Dan Perrin, a former staffer for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations who had studied foreign actors, told TheDCNF there is a risk that the payments to the local police department signal a relationship to Pakistani authorities, such as the intelligence agency ISI, which he said “often works with or is embedded in the major city police forces in Pakistan.”
While they were working on Capitol Hill, the brothers set up a car dealership that took $100,000 from Ali Al-Attar, an Iraqi politician who has been tied to Hezbollah and is wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Imran Awan has been indicted for fraud in connection with a crooked car-dealership.
Their former business partner, Nasir Khattak, testified in Virginia court that the car dealership’s finances consisted of byzantine transfers in which staff and cars were often swapped between it and a dealership next door. …
Perrin said the family’s numerous car-related LLCs deserve special scrutiny because car dealerships are a favorite front for people with ties to foreign governments, providing the opportunity for money laundering and “giving the owners access to credit reports on all Americans”.
To sum up: These Pakistani crooks were engaged by Democratic members of Congress, without any enquiry into their background, to “look after” their computers which contained highly confidential information concerned with the protection of Americans. The Democrats never apparently considered the possibility that their data was being stolen and sent to Pakistani authorities. When their hardware was stolen by the crooks – and they knew it was the Awan gang who had stolen it – they did not go to the police. When the FBI did finally arrest Imran Awan on charges of fraud in a car-dealership – and denied that the gang “had any connection with a foreign government” – Imran Awan continued to be on the payroll of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Democrats were putty in the hands of the foreign criminal gang. Helpless as babies. They feared to offend them by reporting them to the police or firing them.
Yet these people, for whom large numbers of Americans voted to represent them in the federal government, want, yearn, ache to rule the country. To conduct US relations with foreign powers. To be in charge of the world’s mightiest military force …
Clueless Congressional Democrats mothering scoundrels 118
How low, petty, foolish, and nasty the visible members of the Congressional Democratic Party and their media shills have become!
They shrink even smaller when contrasted with the huge figure that President Trump now appears on the world stage.
The tiny people on the Democratic side being so close to the ground that they cannot see higher than the shoes of the First Lady, make do with them to criticize. There’s contemporary political opposition for you!
Pathetic they plainly are. They are also naive. A bunch of them have been taken for a ride by a gang of Pakistani Muslim crooks. (See also seven articles about them here.)
And now it turns out that the Muslims crooks are not only conmen and conwomen; not only thieves; not only bank defrauders; not only in possession of heaps of confidential information about the United States Congress; not only potential or actual blackmailers; but at least one of them is also a slaver, polygamist, and sadist:
From the Daily Caller:
Women in relationships with Imran Awan, the indicted former IT aide for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have recently called Virginia law enforcement and alleged being abused by him, police reports obtained under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act show.
Officers found one of the women bloodied and she told them she “just wanted to leave,” while the second said she felt like a “slave,” according to Fairfax County Police reports … A third woman claimed she was being kept “in captivity”.
The third woman is Awan’s stepmother, Samina Gilani, who said in court documents that Awan invoked his authority as a congressional employee to intimidate immigrant women, in part by telling them he had the power to have people kidnapped.
All but two of the nearly two dozen Democratic women Awan worked for in the House declined to comment on the police reports.
Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, refused to fire Awan for months after his Feb. 2, 2017 banishment from the House computer network due to his being a suspect in a criminal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police into a major cybersecurity breach.
Wasserman Schultz said that “as a mother, a Jew, and a member of Congress,” she wanted to defend his rights, a sentiment echoed by Rep. Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat. Wasserman Schultz also claimed allegations against Awan might stem from Islamophobia. All three women are Muslim.
The sentimental slop that fills their minds! No wonder they were taken advantage of by the Awan gang. Meekly and gratefully, with no doubt a sense of relief, they handed over their passwords – not knowing a thing about computers other than to barely make use of them, if that.
And now they are trying to fudge the issue by claiming (as the Left always does) that they were doing it out of compassion – thinking of their exploiters as children who needed mothering, and because … what? What could Debbie Wasserman Shultz mean by wanting “as a Jew” to defend their rights? One shudders to think what connections her synapses make between “being a Jew” and condoning theft, fraud, and cruelty. And “as a member of Congress”? Ah, yes. Congress = government = Big Mother to the world, in particular to Muslims.
Awan’s attorney, Chris Gowen, a former aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has blasted journalists covering the investigation. The press “should be reminded that Imran Awan is a husband and a father, not a political pawn”, Gowen said. …
Neither of the other two women who complained are married to Awan, though both were apparently in relationships with him. Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, worked as an IT aide for dozens of members of Congress, including Wasserman Schultz. The two women who called the police both lived in the same Alexandria, Va., complex but in different apartments for which Imran paid.
A crying Salam Chaudry called police in December 2015 to the Manitoba Apartment complex for a “domestic dispute”, according to a Fairfax County police report.
The investigating officer wrote that “Imran Awan was not supposed to live there and [Chaudry] wanted him to leave … It appeared that the two people were in a romantic relationship. Ms. Salam had a [redacted] [read wound – ed] that she said happened when she was doing dishes. Ms. Salam said she just wanted to leave and go to a shelter as she has no money. Ms. Salam has two children that were both at the residence both under the age of 8″.
The officer wrote that he “asked Ms. Salam why she was crying and calling police. Ms. Salam insisted nothing happened but that she wanted to leave. I went and spoke to Mr. Awan who quickly advised that he wanted to speak with a lawyer”. “I asked him about the small amount of dried blood that appeared to be on his left hand,” the officer wrote. “He stated that it was from when his ‘roommate’ was getting the phone from him … After he left, I stayed and spoke with Ms. Salam about getting a protective order.”
Samara Siddique told authorities in a July 18 … that “her boyfriend treat her bad and keep her there like a slave … [she] wants him out of her life. Ms. Siddique wanted info on how to obtain a restraining order against him”. The July 18 incident was the third time in less than a year police had responded to altercations between Siddique and Awan, once finding “small cut[s] on stomach and arm”.
The stepmother, Gilani, said … that after she had called the police, “Imran Awan showed up and threatened me for calling the police. Mr. Shahid Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police [he] will do harm to me and my family members back in Pakistan and one of my cousins here in Baltimore.”
She continued: “Imran Awan did admit to me that my phone is tapped and there are devices installed in my house to listen my all conversations … Imran Awan introduces himself as someone from US Congress or someone from federal agencies … Imran Awan manages to have police mobile based on his position in US congress or Federal Agencies to escort him during his visit to Pakistan.” …
Gilani claimed Siddique is Awan’s second wife by Pakistani law, but that he had taken her copy of the marriage license away from her in order to render her helpless.
Just the sort of person, this Imran Awan, whom Congressional Democrats would judge ideal for the job of looking after their information technology.
And they want to rule the country?
Corruption, crime, and clumsy cover-up in the Democratic Party 130
First, Mark Steyn’s comments on the case:
Next, Andrew C. McCarthy writes at National Review:
There is a very intriguing investigation of the Awan family. There are about six of them — brothers, spouses, and attached others — who were retained by various Democrats as computer-systems managers at compensation levels dwarfing that of the average congressional staffer. The Awans fell under suspicion in late 2016 and were canned at the beginning of February, on suspicion of mishandling the sensitive information to which they’d had access: scanning members’ e-mail, transferring files to remote servers under the Awans’ control, stealing computer equipment and hard drives (some of which they attempted to destroy when they were found out), along with a sideline in procurement fraud.
The hard drives were hammered to destroy them of course, just as Hillary Clinton’s were (according to the FBI). Hammered! Every blow declares a great fear of what might be found on them.
Which is?
What else but proof of crimes committed by their owners and associates?
We should say that almost all of them were canned. Hina Alvi and her husband, Imran Awan, stayed on, even though they were no longer authorized to have access to the House computer system (i.e., to do the work they were hired to do). Alvi continued to be retained by Congressman Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, for another four weeks. During that time, we now know, she was tying up loose financial ends, packing her house up, and pulling three young daughters out of school — just before skedaddling to Pakistan.
What Imran Awan was arrested for (on Monday, July 24, 2017), and what he and his wife are openly suspected of, is a scam to cheat a federal credit union out of some $300,000. They made “several false statements about their qualifications for a credit line and their intended use of the money”. McCarthy thinks that “the strongest part of [the] case … involves the schemers’ transferring the loot to their native Pakistan”. This however was not mentioned in the indictment.
Why?
And questions as to why proliferate as more of the story unfolds:
Awan was kept on the payroll for about six more months by Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, and Clinton insider. She finally fired him only after he was arrested at the airport right before a scheduled flight to Qatar, from whence he planned to join Alvi in Pakistan.
Why?
There are grounds to suspect blackmail, given (a) the staggering sums of money paid to the Awans over the years, (b) the sensitive congressional communications to which they had access, (c) the alleged involvement of Imran Awan and one of his brothers in a blackmail-extortion scheme against their stepmother, and (d) Wasserman Schultz’s months of protecting Awan and potentially impeding the investigation. There are also, of course, questions about stolen information.
And why …
Why did the FBI and the Capitol Police allow Hina Alvi to leave the country on March 5 when there were grounds to arrest her at Dulles Airport? Why did they wait to charge her until last week — by which time she was safely in Pakistan, from which it will likely be impossible to extradite her for prosecution? What, moreover, about Awan’s brothers and other apparent accomplices? What has become of them since they were fired by the House almost seven months ago?
Imran Awan’s sudden arrest in late July meant the Justice Department would finally have to file formal charges in court. Thus, there was hope that we’d finally get some answers. Instead, the indictment raises still more questions.
Why, why, why?
To begin with, it is not the easiest thing to get one’s hands on the indictment. The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. There is no press release about the indictment on the office’s website, though U.S. attorneys’ offices routinely issue press releases and make charging documents available in cases of far less national prominence. (I found the indictment through the Orlando Sentinel, which obtained and posted it in conjunction with the paper’s report on the filing of charges.)
By the way, the U.S. attorney’s office is currently led by Channing D. Phillips, an Obama holdover who was never confirmed. Still awaiting Senate confirmation is Jessie Liu, nominated by President Trump in June. …
And here comes the big one, underplayed …
Steven Wasserman, Representative Wasserman Schultz’s brother, has been an assistant U.S. attorney in the office for many years. I have seen no indication that he has any formal role in the case [emphasis added – ed] …
What is clear, however, is that the office is low-keying the Awan prosecution.
But why?
The indictment itself is drawn very narrowly. All four charges flow from a financial-fraud conspiracy of short duration. Only Imran Awan and his wife are named as defendants. There is no reference to Awan-family perfidy in connection with the House communications system.
Why not?
More bizarre still: There is not a word about Alvi’s flight to Pakistan, nor Imran Awan’s failed attempt to follow her there. This is not an oversight. The omission appears quite intentional.
It is common Justice Department practice, in pleading a conspiracy indictment, to allege that the scheme began “on or about” its starting date and continued “up to and including the date of the filing of this indictment”. Strictly speaking, a conspiracy ends when the crime that is its objective has been completed. But there is no requirement that a specific end date be set forth in the indictment. Therefore, prosecutors go as long as they can — i.e., right up to the date the grand jury voted to indict — to give themselves the widest berth possible to argue that evidence damaging to the defense is relevant and admissible. But that is not what happened in the Awan indictment.
The Justice Department alleges that the conspiracy took place “from on or about December 12, 2016 through on or about February 27, 201″. February 27 was six days before Alvi fled and five months before Awan was arrested trying to leave the country. This makes no sense. Indeed, it does not even make sense in the context of the narrow scheme prosecutors have charged: Although the indictment says the conspiracy ended on February 27, it alleges a relevant $83,000 interbank transfer occurred on February 28 (see indictment, paragraphs 8 and 22). That is, prosecutors assert that a money transfer supposedly in furtherance of the conspiracy happened a day after the conspiracy was already over. That is surely just a mistake — anybody can screw up a date.
There is, by contrast, no apparent explanation for omitting from a fraudulent cash-transfer prosecution the fact that the conspirators undertook to transfer themselves to the foreign country where they’d sent the money. Why would prosecutors leave that out of their indictment? Why give Awan’s defense a basis to claim that, since the indictment does not allege anything about flight to Pakistan, the court should bar any mention of it during the trial? In fact, quite apart from the manifest case-related reasons to plead instances of flight, a competent prosecutor would have included them in the indictment simply to underscore that Awan is a flight risk who should have onerous bail conditions or even be detained pretrial.
We must also ask, again: Why did the FBI allow Alvi to flee? Before she boarded her March 5 flight to Qatar (en route to Pakistan), agents briefly detained her. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had already searched her baggage and found $12,400 in cash. As I have pointed out, it is a felony to move more than $10,000 in U.S. currency out of the country unless one completes the required government report … There was no indication that she did so in the complaint affidavit submitted to the court when Awan was arrested last month.
By the time Alvi fled, the Awans had been under investigation by various federal agencies for at least three months.
The FBI was sufficiently attuned to the Awans’ criminality that its agents went to the trouble of chasing Alvi to the airport.
If she didn’t fill out the required form, she should have been arrested for the currency violation. Is it possible that, rather than arresting her, federal agents instructed her to complete the form on the spot? One would hope not, but even in such an unlikely event, Alvi would undoubtedly have made false statements about the provenance of the cash. That would also have been a felony, providing more grounds for her arrest.
Why let her go, especially when, as its agent told the court in the aforementioned affidavit, the FBI “does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States”?
Why again and again.
More bizarre: Why not include Alvi’s flight — as well as Awan’s later attempt to go on the lam — in describing the money-transfer scheme charged in the indictment? Patently, these episodes are damning proof of fraudulent intent, which prosecutors must establish at trial if they are to convict Awan. Did prosecutors fail to mention the flight evidence in hope of diverting attention from the government’s decision to let Alvi flee? Again, one would hope not, but if not, what could the explanation be?
To summarize, the indictment is an exercise in omission.
Nothing about Wasserman Schultz’s energetic efforts to prevent investigators from examining Awan’s laptop. A likely currency-transportation offense against Alvi goes uncharged. And, as for the offenses that are charged, prosecutors plead them in a manner that avoids any reference to what should be their best evidence.
There is something very strange going on here.
Something strange? No. Something nasty and disgraceful, but not strange. Nasty and disgraceful is business as usual in the Democratic Party.
House Democrats have cause to fear blackmail 13
Yet more criminals in the Democratic Party and their employees are getting away free as air.
Luke Rosiak reports at The Daily Caller:
Five members of a Pakistani family under criminal investigation for allegedly misusing their positions as computer administrators for dozens of Democrats in the House of Representatives were paid at least $4 million from July 2009 to the present, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.
Evidence suggests some of the dozens of House Democrats — many of whom serve on the intelligence, homeland security and foreign affairs committees — who employed the suspects were inexplicably paying people they rarely or never saw. See the interactive graphic at the end of this story for the names of the employing representatives.
The suspects had full access to the emails and office computer files of the members for whom they worked. A focus of the investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police is an off-site server on which congressional data was allegedly loaded without the knowledge of authorities.
Even before Capitol Police told chiefs of staff for the employing Democrats Feb. 2 that the Awans — including brothers Imran, Abid and Jamal, and two of their wives, Hina Alvi and Natalia Sova — were suspects in a criminal theft and cybersecurity probe, there were multiple signs that something was amiss.
For example, four of the 500 highest-paid House staffers are suspects, according to the DCNF’s analysis of payroll records. There are more than 15,000 congressional staff employees with an average age of 31, according to Legistorm.
Top slots on Capitol Hill are subject to fierce competition, and for most employees, the hours are long and job security is nonexistent. The median salary for legislative assistants is $43,000 annually, according to InsideGov.com.
Imran Awan has collected $1.2 million in salary since 2010, and his brother Abid and wife Hina Alvi were each paid more than $1 million.
Imran first came to Capitol Hill in the early 2000s and Abid joined him in 2005. Imran’s wife Hina Alvi was added to the payroll in 2007, while Abid’s wife, Natalia Sova, appeared in 2011. Finally, in 2014 the youngest sibling, Jamal, joined the payroll in 2014 at the age of 20 with a salary of $160,000.
“In Imran’s wife’s offices, she didn’t show up or rarely showed up and Imran would handle it,” a former House staffer with direct knowledge of the brothers told TheDCNF. “Once in a while he would take her around to the offices but after a while he stopped even putting up the illusion and did all that stuff himself.”
The former staffer said “Jamal was always there,” but Imran would only work “odd hours.”
Since 2003, the family has collected $5 million overall, with Imran making $2 million and Abid making $1.5 million, according to Legistorm.com, which tracks congressional staff data. Of some 25,000 people who have worked in the House since 2010, only 100 have taken home more than Imran.
As “shared” employees, their salaries were cobbled together with part-time payments from multiple members, with a result that the Awans appeared at one time or another on an estimated 80 House Democrats’ payrolls.
Yet the brothers spent significant time in Pakistan, TheDCNF was told. They even had time beginning in 2009 to operate a Northern Virginia car dealership, with Abid as its day-to-day manager. The dealership received a $100,000 loan that was never repaid from Dr. Ali Al-Attar, a onetime Iraqi politician who fled the U.S. on tax charges and who reportedly has links to the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Among the House Democrats employing the Awans was Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee Chairman whose tenure there was marked by a disastrous email hack that she blamed on the Russians.
Some of the House Democrats terminated the suspects on their payrolls following the meeting with investigators, but it’s uncertain how many have done so.
Court documents show that Imran was flush with enough cash to loan $30,000 to a friend. Yet Abid declared bankruptcy in 2012, discharging debts to others while keeping retaining ownership of two houses.
The “interactive graphic” follows which lists the Democrats who paid the Awans.
The media in general have not considered the story worth reporting. But here are the headlines of other articles in the Daily Caller on this subject. [Go here for the links.]
House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs Committee Members Compromised By Rogue IT Staff
Brothers Had Massive Debts, Years Of Suspicious Activity
…Secretly Took $100K In Iraqi Money
…Owed Money To Hezbollah-Connected Fugitive
…Received $4 Million From Dem Reps
…Allegedly Kept Stepmom In ‘Captivity’ To Access Offshore Cash
…Also Had Access To DNC Emails…Could Read Every Email Dozens Of Congressmen Sent And Received
Paul Ryan: Capitol Police Getting ‘Assistance’ On Criminal Investigation
Read the Court Docs Detailing Greed, Ruthlessness of Democratic IT Guy
House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data
Suspect Has Fled To Pakistan, Relative Says
Since news of their criminal activity became public knowledge despite House Democrats trying to cover it up, the Awans have fled to Pakistan.
Here is the report headlined: House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data
Again Luke Rosiak reports:
Congressional technology aides are baffled that data-theft allegations against four former House IT workers — who were banned from the congressional network — have largely been ignored, and they fear the integrity of sensitive high-level information.
Imran Awan and three relatives were colleagues until police banned them from computer networks at the House of Representatives after suspicion the brothers accessed congressional computers without permission.
Five Capitol Hill technology aides told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group that [Democratic] members of Congress have displayed an inexplicable and intense loyalty towards the suspects who police say victimized them. The baffled aides wonder if the suspects are blackmailing representatives based on the contents of their emails and files, to which they had full access. …
A manager at a tech-services company that works with Democratic House offices said he approached congressional offices, offering their services at one-fourth the price of Awan and his Pakistani brothers, but the members declined. At the time, he couldn’t understand why his offers were rejected but now he suspects the Awans exerted some type of leverage over members.
“There’s no question about it: If I was accused of a tenth of what these guys are accused of, they’d take me out in handcuffs that same day, and I’d never work again,” he said.
The Awans’ ban sent 20 members searching for new IT workers, but another contractor claims he’s had difficulty convincing offices to let him fill the void, even when he seemed like a shoo-in. He says he has the sense some members wrongly believed that he blew the whistle on the Awans’ theft and they were angry at him for it.
Politico reported the Awan crew is “accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network”.
A House IT employee who requested anonymity said tech workers who have taken over some of those offices found that computers … sent all data to an offsite server in violation of House policies. Additionally, staffers’ iPhones were all linked to a single non-government iTunes account.
Awan began working for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida in 2005, and his wife, his brother’s wife, and two of his brothers all appeared on the payrolls of various House Democrats soon after, payroll records show. They have collected $4 million since 2010.
For years, it was widely known that Awan, and eventually his 20-year-old brother Jamal, did the bulk of the work for various offices, while no-show employees were listed on members’ staffs in order to collect additional $165,000 salaries, workers said. This circumvented a rule that prevents any one staffer from making more than members of Congress.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the corrupt former chairperson on the DNC, wants her computer back. The police want to keep it while they investigate the crimes of the Awan family. She must fear that they will find something on it that could incriminate her.
Here is the video record of her threatening the police with “consequences” if they do not return her “equipment”. The relevant altercation begins at the 3 minute mark: