hired foreign-born IT specialists who were later
suspected of committing federal crimes
and smashed lots of hard drives
just before skipping the country,
would the mainstream media
ignore it, like they ignored this story?
Pakistani-born brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan are at the center of a criminal investigation by US Capital Hill Police and the FBI.
The Awan brothers are Pakistani Information Technology (IT) specialists, who worked for more than 30 house and senate Democrats, including Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (DWS).
Andre Taggart is the US Marine who alerted the FBI after he moved into a house he rented from Imran Awan, and found a garage full of "smashed hard drives".
Taggart, a black US Marine who says he typically votes Democrat, thinks DWS is attempting to shield the Awans from their crimes.
“I just want to get these [guys] locked up and exposed,” said Taggart.
“The people who facilitated them should also be locked up, as far as I’m concerned.”
Taggart thinks his fellow Democrats are making a mistake by ignoring a scandal with serious criminal and national security implications.
“Him, his wife, his brother, all working down there — there’s no way they could do this without help."
"If we can drag Trump and his wingnuts through the mud for the Russia influence ... then it’s only fair that we also expose this shit,” Taggart said.
Marine Taggart and his Navy wife had found “wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner.”
“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.”
He called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and not long after FBI agents arrived with the Capitol Police to interview them and confiscate the equipment.
After FBI agents seized a number of "smashed hard drives" and other computer equipment from his former residence in Virginia, Pakistani-born Imran Awan has desperately tried to get the hard drives back.
And why did DWS seemingly threaten the chief of the US Capitol Police earlier this summer with “consequences” for holding IT equipment that was confiscated as part of an ongoing legal investigation?
Imran Awan had access to DWS's iPad password, meaning he and his brothers had direct access to the notorious stolen DNC eMails.
DWS has rejected questions about Imran stealing DNC eMails as “absurd” and “laughable,” even though:
(1) he had access to all of her congressional emails and files,
(2) he had access to her iPad password,
(3) he is suspected by police of cyber security violations, and
(4) he had long been accused of defrauding people for financial gain.
DWS claimed that Awan is being “persecuted” by the Capitol Police and FBI.
Imran Awan and his wife (Hina Alvi, who successfully fled to Pakistan with over $12,000 in cash) have been indicted by a grand jury on four counts of real estate loan application fraud.
Speculation continues over whether additional criminal charges will be filed.
The Awans also appear to have been running a ghost employee scheme, collecting $6 million in salaries from taxpayers since 2004 even though only a few of the six people on the House payroll actually performed the IT work all six were paid for.
Imran Awan’s brother Abid managed to operate a Virginia car dealership while being paid $160,000 annually for IT work for multiple House Democrats.
That dealership received $100,000 from an Iranian fugitive linked to Hezbollah, according to court records.
Amjad Khan, a former business partner, told the Daily Mail that “[Abid] would just go in [to the Hill] a couple times a week for a couple of hours, just to show his face.
On paper, I think [Abid and Imran] were both working, but in reality only one was working (IT), the other was running the (car) business.”
Khan added that “when he would go to D.C., [Abid] would spend $3,000 or $4,000 a night.”
Imran Awan was first employed in 2004 by former Democrat Rep. Robert Wexler (FL) as an “information technology director”, before he began working in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (DWS) office in 2005.
On March 22, 2016, eight democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter, requesting that their IT 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 Awan brothers appeared to have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars of IT equipment from congressional offices, including computers and servers, for resale.
The Awans appear to have created a scheme to purchase IT equipment in a way that avoided tracking by House administrators, and then stole the equipment and sold that equipment for personal gain (after Congressional Representatives had paid for it).
They’re suspected of working with an employee of CDW Government Inc. — one of the Hill’s largest technology providers — to alter invoices in a way that bypassed the inventory tracking system.
New York Democrat Representative Yvette Clarke quietly wrote-off $120,000 in missing electronics tied to the Awans.
Clarke’s chief of staff dismissed the loss, and prevented it from coming up in future audits, by signing a form removing the missing equipment from a House-wide tracking system after one of the Awan brothers alerted the office the equipment was missing.
Rep. Clarke's office felt no need to report $120,000 of missing IT equipment to the authorities.
And the missing $120,000 covers only Rep. Clarke’s office.
Imran and his relatives worked for more than 40 current House members when they were banned from the House computer network in February 2017.
Why did DWS keep Awan on her taxpayer funded payroll all the way up until the day he was arrested by the FBI at Dulles airport while trying to flee the country to Pakistan?
Some congressional IT aides believe the Awan’s are blackmailing Congressional representatives, based on the contents of their emails and files, because the representatives displayed intense loyalty towards the Awans that is not deserved.
Andrew McCarthy III, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who led the prosecution for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, says there is "something very strange" about the recent indictment filed against Imran Awan and his wife Hina Alvi in the District of Columbia.
McCarthy points out that "the indictment appears to go out of its way not to mention" that Imran was apprehended while in the process of fleeing the country, a fact that that seems to be the best evidence to prove the fraud charges.
One after the other, the wife and husband pulled up stakes and tried to flee to Pakistan after they’d wired the funds there — the wife successfully fleeing, the husband nabbed as he was about to board his flight.
A peculiar thing about the Justice Department’s indictment of Imran Awan and Hina Alvi: There’s not a word in it about flight to Pakistan.
The indictment describe in detail four counts of bank-fraud conspiracy, false statements on credit applications, and unlawful monetary transactions, yet leaves out the strongest evidence of guilt.
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 mention of it during the trial?
Imran's wife, Hina Alvi, fled the country back in March after she was detained by US Customs and Border Protection agents with over $12,000 cash in her luggage -- a crime because it was not properly disclosed.
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 (see sections 5316 and 5322 of Title 31, U.S. Code).
She didn’t fill out the required form, and she should have been arrested for the currency violation.
Why let her go, especially when the FBI “does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States”?
The case is being handled by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
There is no press release about the indictment on the office’s website, though US attorneys’ offices routinely issue press releases and make charging documents available in cases of far less prominence.
The US 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.
Meanwhile, Steven Wasserman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s brother, has been an assistant US attorney in the office for many years.
