Keeping staffers under criminal investigation employed and rigging a primary election process to the favor of the party-anointed candidate is certainly enough to make the list of “worst ethics violators.”
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) released its list of “top 5 ethics violators of 2017.” At the top of the list (second only to the unnamed members of Congress linked to the fresher- and ongoing- sexual harassment scandal) is US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).Imran Awan: The biggest scandal you've never heard of? Why mainstream media has been accused of ignoring the arrest of DNC staffer Imran Awan. ABC News Australia 9/1/17
DOJ agreees not to prosecute Imran Awan for House cybersecurity and theft, but questions remain
In September 2016, the House Office of Inspector General gave House leaders a presentation that alleged that Alvi, Imran, brothers Abid Awan and Jamal Awan, and a friend were logging into the servers of members who had previously fired him and funneling data off the network. It said evidence “suggests steps are being taken to conceal their activity” and that their behavior mirrored a “classic method for insiders to exfiltrate data from an organization.”
Server logs show, it said, that Awan family members made “unauthorized access” to congressional servers in violation of House rules by logging into the servers of members who they didn’t work for.
The presentation especially found problems on one server, that of the House Democratic Caucus, an entity chaired at the time by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra of California.
On Feb. 3, 2017, Paul Irving, the House’s top law enforcement officer, wrote in a letter to the Committee on House Administration that soon after it became evidence, the server went “missing.”
The letter continued: “Based upon the evidence gathered to this point, we have concluded the employees are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems.”
Imran, Abid, Jamal, Alvi and a friend were banned from the House network the same day Kiko sent the letter.
. . .
Imran wasn’t arrested until July 2017, when he tried to leave the country and was taken into custody at Dulles airport. His lawyer is Chris Gowen, a former aide to Hillary Clinton.
Wasserman Schultz kept paying Awan after he was banned from Congress. A Capitol Police report shows that in April 2016, Imran left a laptop with the username RepDWS in a Capitol Hill phone booth late at night, and it was taken by police.
Police said they needed it as evidence, but Wasserman Schultz pledged “consequences” for the police chief. Wasserman Schultz’ brother, a prosecutor in the D.C. US Attorney’s office, has tweeted about the case under the handle “fedpros.”
Gowen said he felt “very strongly” that the RepDWS laptop should not be examined, and prosecutors never publicly challenged that request.
No one else connected to Imran that was banned from the House has been charged, yet the House has not re-instated them. Imran, Hina, Abid and Jamal have also shared IT duties with Haseeb Rana, former McDonalds worker Rao Abbas and Nataliia Sova, a Ukrainian who is married to Abid.
House officials told TheDCNF that the vast majority of evidence about misconduct allegations on Capitol Hill — including $120,000 in missing equipment from the office of Yvette Clarke — is actually against Abid, not Imran.
Capitol Hill officials involved in oversight of the case previously told TheDCNF that the reason the DOJ was not pursuing the case was because the Democrats were refusing to press charges.
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| What did Imran Awan have on Democrats that Debbie Wasserman Schultz fought so to pay and protect him? |
"Justice Department covers up possible spy ring scandal in Democratic congressional offices" - Opinion by Frank Miniter, Fox News, July 3, 2018. Video with Daily Caller's Investigative Reporter Luke Rosiak
In an incredible sweetheart plea deal, Imran Awan – a former IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and other congressional Democrats – pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of making a false statement on a home equity loan.
Shockingly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia issued a news release about Awan’s plea agreement that made no mention of his IT work for Democrats in Congress, no mention of Wasserman Schultz, and made his case sound like a minor local criminal matter of little interest to anyone. It was headlined: “Virginia Man Pleads Guilty to Making False Statement on Application for Home Equity Loan.”Ho-hum, right? Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.
Even on the simple theft of government equipment there is a lot there for prosecutors. One of Awan’s former tenants, a retired U.S. Marine, even found and turned over to authorities several computers and smart phones with government markings on them that he found in Awan’s rental property.
There is also internal U.S. House of Representatives’ paperwork detailing some of what went on in the offices Awan and his associates who did contract IT work for congressional Democrats.
Internal House Inspector General findings have also determined that Awan copied the emails of up to 44 Democratic House members and other personal data and backed them up to a server that reportedly went missing and to a Dropbox account.
Awan, his wife and other relatives and friends were also all paid exorbitant salaries for working as IT contractors for members of Congress for years – even though many of them didn’t have any expertise in IT and even though they didn’t undergo background checks.
It is also likely that a few of Awan’s associates didn't even show up to earn all the money they were paid. Still, no charges have been filed against Awan or his brothers relating to alleged thefts, possible espionage and for providing false information (an image of the Democratic House Caucus computer server) to Capitol Police.
It is actually very hard to sum-up all that this group of IT aides (who are almost all from Pakistan) did and the crimes they might have committed.
Writing a book on the topic was like piecing together an international spy thriller filled with anonymous sources, encrypted conversations, off-the-record meetings, foreign documents and hard facts from various court filings and from internal investigations in the House.
What is clear to me, after interviewing so many people, is there is a lot of evidence here for investigators, but also a lot of political reasons why they might want this case to go away.
Awan was even Wasserman Schultz’s IT aide when she headed the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which incidentally was when the DNC was hacked and the information given to Wikileaks.
I have no evidence that Awan was in any way responsible for the leak. Still, it is incredible how much of all this interconnects circumstantially.
Real court scenes (when Awan pleaded guilty and waved his right to a trial by jury), possible depositions of House staffers and members of Congress, and the investigations that would take place if the Justice Department pursued additional charges would have necessarily dug into a lot of things the Washington establishment would rather not deal with publicly. It also would have forced investigators to follow the trail to Pakistan.
Still, I didn’t think these investigating agencies would be brazen enough to agree to this kind of a sweetheart deal for Imran Awan and wife, Hina Alvi. Now Awan will not face prosecution where the more serious allegations against him can be judged.Sentencing in House Democratic IT scandal lets Imran Awan off with only a slap on the wrist
What’s the big deal?
- Outside of the quaint idea that justice should be equal – even for members of Congress, their staffers and contractors – there are a lot of problems inherent in covering up this multifaceted case.
- Foreign intelligence agencies must have noticed how easy it was for the Awans to get access to the date and emails of so many members of Congress.
- The slap on the wrist that Awan received hardly acts as a deterrent to those who’d like to know what members of Congress are saying behind closed doors.
- As any computer security professional will tell you, the weakest part of any system is people. Security won’t be taken seriously if no one pays a price for allowing massive security breaches in Congress.
- President Trump’s tweets related to this case were even used as a rationale by Judge Chutkan to let Awan walk out of the courtroom with only three months supervised release.
- If there is one takeaway right now it’s that the Trump administration should demand an investigation by the Office of Inspector General into how this plea deal was made. The IG should also look into what actually happened in Congress. This case offers the president the opportunity to expose the swamp to the American people.
By covering this up, the establishment has left a lot to come out that will embarrass Congress, the mainstream media and the Justice Department.
