Wasserman Schultz Aide Arrested at Airport, Wired $300K to Pakistan
He’s also under investigation for breaching House IT systems and stealing equipment.
Authorities arrested Imran Awan, the IT aide of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) under an FBI investigation, at Dulles Airport after he wired almost $300,000 to Pakistan.
The police arrested Awan on bank fraud charges and cannot leave the country.
A source recently told The Daily Caller “that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into ‘serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network’” by Awan, his wife Hina Alvi, and his brothers Abid and Jamal.
Tuesday’s Charges
Politico reported:
Awan pled not guilty on Tuesday to one count of bank fraud during his arraignment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Awan is accused of attempting to defraud the Congressional Federal Credit Union by obtaining a $165,000 home equity loan for a rental property, which is against the credit union’s policies since it is not the owner’s primary residence. Those funds were then included as part of a wire transfer to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
A Department of Justice spokesman explained that authorities released Awan on a “high-intensity supervision program.” This means Awan “must wear a GPS monitor, abide by a curfew of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and cannot leave a 50-mile radius of his Lorton, Va., home.” The program forced Awan to surrender his passport.
His preliminary hearing is scheduled for August 21.
The FBI Investigation
In February, reports surfaced that four House employees face an investigation for breaching House IT systems and stealing equipment.Media named Hina, Abid, Imran, and Jamal in reports the following days. Lawmakers fired the four when the suspicions arose and barred the brothers “from computer networks at the House of Representatives.”
The House members included three congressmen on the intelligence panel and three on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The officials suspect the four of “accessing members’ computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress.”
The Representatives affected include Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY).
Hina escaped with their two daughters to Pakistan in March, even though the Capitol Police caught up with her. From The Daily Caller:
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted a search of Alvi’s bags immediately prior to her boarding the plane and located a total of $12,400.00 in U.S. cash inside. Alvi was permitted to board the flight to Qatar and she and her daughters have not returned to the United States,” the affidavit says. “Alvi had numerous pieces of luggage with her, including cardboard boxes… Your affiant does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.”
Smashed Hard Drives
On Sunday night, the FBI seized a bunch of smashed hard drives from the home of Awan. A Marine corps veteran and his Navy Officer wife now occupy the home and he discovered “wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner.” The Daily Caller continued:
The tenants called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and, not long after, FBI agents arrived together with the Capitol Police to interview them and confiscate the equipment. The Marine spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for his wife’s naval career, saying she doesn’t want to be associated with a national security incident.
“It was in the garage. They recycled cabinets and lined them along the walls. They left in a huge hurry,” the Marine said. “It looks like government-issued equipment. We turned that stuff over.”
Then Imran found out and became angry when he couldn’t get back his equipment:
The Marine said Imran wanted the hard drives back so desperately that he threatened to sue the renter for stealing them.
“It was unbelievable. I don’t know where they get off thinking they’re going to sue us for items we have no obligation to hold onto,” he said.
Imran came to the house for the items “three to four times,” but the Marine wouldn’t let him enter.
“Their lawyer contacted us today via email and said we owed $350 in late charges and the items he left in the house,” the Marine said.
Wasserman Schultz
Wasserman Schultz finally fired Awan on Tuesday, according to The Hill:
A spokesperson for Wasserman Schultz said that Awan had been fired on Tuesday.
“Mr. Awan previously served as an employee in our office, but his services have been terminated,” Wasserman Schultz’ spokesman David Damron said in a statement.
Since the investigation started, Wasserman Schultz had done all she could to protect Awan. She even changed his title from technology administrator to advisor. The amount of protection caused confusion among other staffers in Congress:
That baffled a Democratic IT staffer, who said “I can’t imagine why she’d be that good of friends with a technology provider.”
“Usually if someone does bad stuff, an office is going to distance themselves” rather than incur political fallout for a mere staffer, he added.
Wasserman Schultz even threatened the Capitol Police with consequences if they didn’t return a laptop they seized after they found it “hidden in a vacant office.” From The Daily Caller:
“My understanding is the the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” Wasserman Schultz said in the annual police budget hearing of the House Committee On Appropriations’ Legislative Branch Subcommittee.
“We can’t return the equipment,” Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa told the Florida Democrat.
“I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences,” Wasserman Schultz said.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Schultz may be a traitor, but she’s good at managing the press. You never see a photo of her that shows her massive padunkadunk.
This is a good summary – but you made one BIG omission in your opener: he was FLEEING THE COUNTRY.
As did his wife, and one of his brothers, I believe.
The entire Democrat Party is a criminal web, IMHO. Hillary should be in JAIL for what she did, and allowed to happen with her servers while Sec. of State.
Let’s see if THIS time the FBI has TEETH. I hope DWS and more go to jail and lift the veil of these naive, brainwashed youth who believe the Democrat Party is a party to vote for, to trust. It is just the opposite!
Let the TRUTH be heard. Finally.
My fear is that they will actually prosecute these guys, but treat Wasserman-Schultz and the other Dems as “victims” rather than the co-conspirators that they actually are.
In other words, the feds will do a cove-up on behalf of these criminal legislators.
Where is the Russia connection? If there is no Russia connection then there is no story here. Move along, nothing to see here.
So Imran Awan attempts to flee the country and he makes … BAIL?
BAIL? BAIL?
Oh sure you say, the authorities took his passport. I bet he’s got another half-dozen of those stashed in various places.
Oh sure, he’s wearing an ankle bracelet. It’ll beep the entire way to Islamabad. He might return it from there via FedEx.
Oh sure, he’s on curfew. So he’ll travel to an alternative airport and abscond during daylight hours.
This guy will be in Pakistan in two weeks, count on it.
Or dead.
Count on it, there’s a reason DWS has gone so far overboard to try to shield him, and it ain’t ideology,and it ain’t political correctness.
Whatever he was doing, she was in there in on it, and he has the goods to drag her down. Why else keep him on the payroll after all this, unless you have to keep paying him off?
So yeah, ending up like Seth Rich looks like a real high probability here.
Paul and Tom
You guys are right — I hadn’t yet had my coffee when I questioned the bail issue, but perhaps the whole reason to turn Imran lose is to make it easier for the hit man.
Should such a thing happen, and let’s all hope that it doesn’t, I would do a forensics analysis of the bullets they get out of him compared to the ones found in Seth Rich.
(is that cold of me? why yes it is…)
Right. He’d be safer in a lockup. They turned him loose to allow certain elements to erase him more easily, should they choose to do so.
“The police arrested Awan on bank fraud charges and cannot leave the country.”
The police cannot leave the country?
To avoid being labeled Islamaphobic – the Dems hired a bunch of liars and crooks to run their IT organization. And, who they would have certainly sold state secrets if they had been given the chance. (Who knows how many thumb drives full of documents were carried off to Pakistan already?)
Of course, if you criticize the employment choice than you are the Islamaphobe.
Why were foriegners ever in a position to have such access?
Why was the JV police team the only one investigating until recently? With all the election hacking mania nobody thought there might be some overlap here?
Can the bias of the media get any more blatant? Can you imagine if this was the RNC instead? There would be an all-consuming media frenzy. Instead, crickets. And they wonder why nobody trust them.
What access? They had no access to any classified information. This is not a spy ring story, it’s an ordinary criminal story. A bunch of crooks ripped off the taxpayers, stole government equipment, and some dumb Democrats, rather than admit they were taken, enabled them to continue, hoping the whole thing would never come to light.
If they had access to House servers, they almost certainly had access to classified information. Simple travel plans for certain govt officials are considered classified. Ask General Petraeus – found guilty partly for releasing his travel schedule to his girlfriend, not wife, as I recall. Not to mention Democrats showing their predilection to keeping classified intel on every private server they can reach to wipe.
There is no classified information on the servers they had access to. Nor is there supposed to be any on the members’ private systems which they managed. Most members, even Democrats, seem aware of the proper handling of such information, and do not treat it the way Clinton did. Hence the request from eight Democrats for funding so they could each get one staffer background-checked and given clearance to help them with classified documents. If they weren’t being careful with it they wouldn’t feel the burden of having to handle it all themselves.
How do you know what is on those servers? Given the recent history of Democrats, their insecure systems, and classified information I expect there is some classified information there. If nothing else, just some of the stuff that leaked off Clinton’s server likely is there. But it really doesn’t matter because I didn’t say a thing about “classified information”.
Classified or not, they had access to plenty of information that people hostile to the US should not have their hands on. Merely embarrassing information can be used to blackmail people, and if you’re going to blackmail somebody half the US Congress would be a great place to start.
So my point was that these positions handling sensitive information should not be going to foreigners, especially from countries like Pakistan.
What recent history of Democrats, other than Clinton? In any case, the the House servers are handled by competent people, not “Democrats”, and they can be trusted to do their jobs.
Podesta and Humma Wiener are both Democrats, correct?
“House servers are handled by competent people, not “Democrats”, and they can be trusted to do their jobs.”
No, they are obviously NOT competent people who can be trusted to do their jobs.
Otherwise there wouldn’t be improperly disposed of equipment littered around the DC area and people trying to flee the country.
The DNC servers were leaking like a sieve during the election, remember?
Why else would DWS be in such a huff that she’s lost control of one of her laptops? There’s something on the computer she doesn’t want anyone else to see, certainly not the police. You don’t threaten the police because there’s just ordinary Congress critter data on it. All that kind of data is on unclassified systems and easily downloadable to a new laptop. (Laptops are usually connected to docking stations to synchronize them with files and email on servers, so it’s unlikely there’s irreplaceable data on the laptop.) There’s something on that laptop that isn’t supposed to be there and/or that would incriminate her in some kind of criminal enterprise.
Kilgore Trout trivia: When he was a young, struggling writer, Kurt Vonnegut became quite good friends with Theodore Sturgeon, the noted sci-fi writer who, among many great works, Star Trek’s “Amok Time”
Vonnegut wrote a little play about struggling writers, using both of them as inspiration, and he named his lead character Kilgore Trout in honor of Theodore Sturgeon.
As I recall, the backstory to the whole Jharles meltdown was that he was sure that he deserved a controlling interest in what became Pajamas Media – he was always in it just for the money. And when he got out-maneuvered and kicked out of any ownership role (because he was such an asshole, basically) he decided “well I’ll make you all regret the day you refused to recognize my greatness!!” and he decided to go full left and dump hate on all of his old allies just out of spite.
Well, he’s now a forgotten footnote in the online wars, one that fades a little bit more each year.
ahh, that was out of context, meant to go in another thread elsewhere. Ignore it.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who was wondering where you were going with that!
So…
When will the MSM finally (and begrudgingly) report this scandal?
A week?
A month?
They’re really busy with the PDT Boy Scout Jamboree story, so it may take a while!
will not be reported until it becomes a big item on Twitter etc. The MSM wants this entire story dead and gone just like Seth Rich.
As Iowahawk reminds us:
“The media exists to cover the news. With a pillow. Until it stops moving.”
Take note of today’s lesson, kids — if you’re a foreign national hired by a major political party to run their IT operations, and, you steal equipment and sensitive data, then, destroy and carelessly dispose of said equipment in a rental property for which you are actively seeking tenants, DO NOT, under any circumstances, rent your property to a United State Marine, active service member of the military, or, anyone else who works for a law enforcement or intelligence agency!
And this morning, this is dominating the news. Well, we’ve were warned. Now we’re going to suffer the consequences. Woe is us. Head for the bunkers!
Holy Crap!
Someone outside the non MSM world is reporting on this!
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-congresswoman-fires-it-worker-accused-of-bank-fraud/ar-AAoRScF?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp
The word “collusion” comes to mind.
Oh!
And the word “hacking” too.
Why did Wasserman-Schultz work so hard to protect this guy? I’m thinking it wasn’t out of loyalty.
In my business, investment advising, we are forced to prove every year that we understand the laws and we are NOT allowed to do business citizens from countries we are at war with or are known to sponsor terrorism and many other reasons. WHY IS THAT NOT THE CASE WITH OUR GOVERNMENT!!!
And while we are at it, no one gets more scrutiny regarding anti-money laundering activity than we investment advisors. It seems that everyone who is actually in the money laundering business is EXEMPT!!! The banksters and the National Association of Realtors and laundering money hundreds of millions and billions at a time right out in the open! The most they ever get from us is failure to supervise and/or failure to report when a curious transfer of $10,000 is not reported. But if you’re a congressman or senator, that’s okay. And so is trading the markets on insider information.
Our federal government is just one big mafia operation.
There it is…”banksters”.
Your OccupyWhatever nutbaggery is on full display!
“And so is trading the markets on insider information.”
Yep. Nutz.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/26/exclusive-ronna-romney-mcdaniel-debbie-wasserman-schultz-must-testify-before-congress-on-it-staffer/
Nobody seems to be talking much about the money. To whom was it sent? If there isn’t a terrorism investigation there should be.