Imran Awan Scandal Shows Just How Much Dirt Dems Wanted to Hide By Focusing on Trump-Russia, by Tyler O’Neil.
When U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI, and Customs and Border Protection teamed up to arrest Imran Awan, an IT staffer for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and other congressional Democrats, Americans began to realize just how broken and corrupt the Democratic Party has become. Indeed, such scandals beg the question of whether the Trump-Russia hype has not been a desperate attempt to distract the country from a long train of scandals on the Left. …
Politico reported that Awan is “at the center of a criminal investigation potentially impacting dozens of lawmakers.” He was arrested after wiring $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to Pakistan, The Daily Caller reported. …
IT workers for the Democrats who got paid outrageous amounts and were untouchable. Blackmail?
The Awan brothers worked for more than 30 House and Senate Democrats, as well as former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who only fired Imran Awan on Tuesday after his arrest. News of the investigation broke in February, but Schultz kept Awan on staff for five months before firing him. Schultz even threatened Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa about the investigation in May.
The family had repeated long-term financial struggles, despite extraordinarily high salaries for congressional IT aides. Jamal, who public records suggest is only 22 years old, was paid nearly $160,000 annually, three times the average House IT staff salary. Abid was paid $161,000 and Amran $165,000. Even so, the family has a history of massive debts and bankruptcy. …
Other House IT aides wondered whether the Awans were blackmailing the Democrats who waited so long to fire them. “I don’t know what they have, but they have something on someone. It’s been months at this point” with no arrests, Pat Sowers, a 12-year House IT aide told The Daily Caller.
“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,” said a manager at a tech-services company that works with Democratic House offices. He also reported offering his company’s services to Democrat offices for one-fourth the price of Awan and his brothers, but the Democrats declined.
The Awans have collected $4 million since 2010.
Wasserman Schultz Seemingly Planned To Pay Suspect Even While He Lived In Pakistan, by Luke Rosiak.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz seemingly planned to pay cyber-probe suspect and IT aide Imran Awan even while he was living in Pakistan, if the FBI hadn’t stopped him from leaving the U.S. Monday. …
In all, six months of actions reveal a decision to continue paying a man who seemingly could not have been providing services to her, and who a mountain of evidence suggests was a liability. The man long had access to all of Wasserman Schultz’s computer files, work emails and personal emails, and he was recently accused by a relative in court documents of wiretapping and extortion.
Steyn: ‘Collusion’ Dems Are Looking for Is in Wasserman Schultz Staffer Probe, by Fox News.
Mark Steyn said all the aspects of “collusion” the Democrats and Robert Mueller are searching for regarding President Trump can be found in the ongoing story of a former IT staffer to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
As FoxNews.com reported, Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles Airport on a bank fraud charge, and was found to have smashed hard drives in his possession.
“It’s about everything that the Democrats and the media spent months… trying to prove [with] the Russia investigation,” he said.
Steyn said Awan’s story involved a powerful political figure trying to interfere in a federal investigation.
“We have actual criminal elements,” he said. “Everything they’ve been looking for is… staring them in the face with this mysterious guy.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Pakistani IT Scammers, by Andrew McCarthy.
Awan and his family cabal of fraudsters had access for years to the e-mails and other electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. It turns out they were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks. …
This is not about bank fraud. The Awan family swindles are plentiful, but they are just window-dressing. This appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security. …
Why were they paid so much for doing so little? Intriguing as it is, that’s a side issue. A more pressing question is: Why were they given access to highly sensitive government information? Ordinarily, that requires a security clearance, awarded only after a background check that peruses ties to foreign countries, associations with unsavory characters, and vulnerability to blackmail.
These characters could not possibly have qualified. Never mind access; it’s hard to fathom how they retained their jobs.
Why has the investigation taken so long? Why so little enforcement action until this week? Why, most of all, were Wasserman Schultz and her fellow Democrats so indulgent of the Awans? …
As evidence has mounted, the scores of Democrats for whom the Awans worked have expressed no alarm. Instead, we’ve heard slanderous suspicions that the investigation is a product of — all together now — “Islamophobia.”
But Samina Gilani, the Awan brothers’ stepmother, begs to differ. Gilani complained to Virginia police that the Awans secretly bugged her home and then used the recordings to blackmail her. She averred in court documents that she was pressured to surrender cash she had stored in Pakistan. Imran claimed to be “very powerful” — so powerful he could order her family members kidnapped.
Corruption, collusion with foreigners, serious misbehavior by party leaders — reckon we’ll hear anything about this on the Australian ABC? Even a white-washed account explaining how the lefties are really not guilty? Meanwhile a year of investigating Trump-Russia connections has found nothing — so Mueller is delving in to Trump’s tax returns from 10 years ago — and that mud gets reported on the ABC …
As Iowahawk likes to say, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.” Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
