House Democrats put complete trust in a gang of Pakistani crooks 289

… 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 … 

A huge political scandal 101

… gravely endangering national security.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, erstwhile chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, employed Imran Awan, a Hezbollah-connected Muslim from Pakistan, as her information technology aide. She only fired him this week, the day after he was arrested at an airport just before boarding a plane to Lahore last Monday (July 24, 2017).

From Conservative HQ by George Rasley:

Imran Awan, the House Democrat’s information technology staffer … has been apprehended at Dulles Airport trying to flee to his native Pakistan. …

FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator …

Yet another crook associated with the gang was welcomed by Democrats to deal with their political secrets:

And it is very interesting how the car dealership’s finances were strangely interwoven with those of the U.S. House of Representatives. A car-dealing associate who was owed money by the brothers, Rao Abbas, also a Muslim, was placed on the congressional payroll.

Abbas is listed as the IT professional for former Democratic Representative Patrick Murphy, a then-member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and its Subcommittee on Department of Defense, Intelligence and Overhead Architecture and (irony alert) Subcommittee on the NSA and Cybersecurity.

Their lender of funds, Dr. Ali Al-Attar was also a crook and a link to Hezbollah:

Philip Giraldi, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, wrote that Dr. Ali Al-Attar “was observed in Beirut, Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official” in 2012–shortly after the loan was made. …

In  2009, his medical license was suspended by Maryland for separate instances of billing patients and insurance companies for unneeded services.

While practicing medicine in Maryland and Virginia he allegedly defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies by billing for non-existent medical procedures. The FBI raided his offices in 2009 and the Department of Health and Human Services sued his business partner in 2011.

In November 2010, the Maryland State Board of Physicians brought charges of “unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine and failure to cooperate in a lawful investigation”.

Attar was indicted in March 2012 on separate tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI found he used multiple bank accounts to hide income. He fled back to Iraq to avoid prison …

The Awan brothers worked for more than 30 House and Senate Democrats, as well as Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The substantial scandal has raised questions about who may have been passed data which the Awans had access to, given Pakistan’s history of collaborating with a number of foreign countries that have demonstrated past willingness to influence U.S. politics.

But here’s where it gets scary.

Gets scary? We are already spooked, and now dig our nails into our palms:

These Muslim staffer’s services were so important to the Democrats, that on March 22, 2016, eight Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter, requesting that their staffers be granted access to Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). Of those that signed the letter were representatives Jackie Speier (CA) and Andre Carson (IN), the second Muslim in Congress, both of whom employed the Awan brothers.

The brothers were also employed by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, such as: Jackie Speier (D-CA), Andre Carson (D-IN), Joaquín Castro (D-TX), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Robin Kelly (D-IL), and Ted Lieu (D-CA).

Lieu has since openly called for leaks by members of President Trump’s administration despite the fact that he may until recently have been under surveillance by a foreign entity …

It’s the old story: the Left accuses the Right of whatever wrongs they are themselves committing. Their accusations are a sure sign of their own guilt.

One bombshell that has been all but ignored by the main stream media is that Imran Awan had access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s iPad password, meaning that the brothers also had direct access to the notorious DNC emails.

Why has none of this made the front page of The Washington Post, New York Times or the lead segment of the ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN evening news? ..

We know why. Those “news” reporters will cover up any and every crime committed by the the Democratic Party.

The House of Representatives, and especially the Capitol Police whose job is generally viewed as protecting Members from embarrassment, not counter-espionage, cannot be trusted to conduct a full and politics-free investigation of this national security disaster.

It is time this investigation moves beyond bank fraud and laptop theft to became a national security investigation with the FBI and counterintelligence agencies replacing the politics-tainted Capitol Police as the lead agency investigating how House Democrats handed over the backdoor to the House computer network to a Hezbollah and ISI connected cell that was paid some $5 million by the US government and then laundered the money through a car dealership and a crooked Iranian doctor.

Maybe when the FBI finishes looking for evidence that President Trump  – did what? – danced on a bed in a Russian hotel with Vladimir Putin and a bunch of micturating whores or something like that while the two of them plotted to make Hillary Clinton lose the election last November, they will get round to looking into this HUGE POLITICAL SCANDAL.

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Imran Awan with a Democrat friend