by WorldTribune Staff, May 25, 2017
While the investigation into the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich continues to be ignored by the major media, a looming Democratic Party scandal that has also gone under the radar involve allegations of a major data theft by four former House IT workers who count multiple Democrat members of Congress as clients.
Imran Awan and four Pakistani relatives, who worked for multiple Democratic representatives, were banned from House computer networks after they were suspected of accessing congressional computers without permission.
Attention is focused on former DNC head Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an Awan laptop confiscated by the Washington, D.C. police and threats by Wasserman Schultz against the D.C. police chief over failure to return the laptop.
Related: New tweets on Seth Rich murder describe ‘complete panic’ at DNC, May 22, 2017
Congressional IT staffers told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group that “members of Congress have displayed an inexplicable and intense loyalty towards the suspects who police say victimized them” causing them to suspect the Awan group of “blackmailing representatives based on the contents of their emails and files, to which they had full access.”
Investigators said Awan and his relatives had the capacity to read all emails dozens of members of Congress sent and received, as well as access any files members and their staffs stored. Court records show the brothers ran a side business that owed $100,000 to an Iranian fugitive who has been tied to Hizbullah, and their stepmother says they often send money to Pakistan.
A Democratic IT contractor told the Daily Caller that members “are saying don’t say anything, this will all blow over if we all don’t say anything.” The Awans “had [members] in their pocket,” and “there are a lot of members who could go down over this.”
Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge’s office told Politico a month after the ban that she had not fired Imran either.
After Wasserman Schultz and Fudge, as well as New York Democratic Reps. Gregory Meeks and Yvette Clarke and the House Democratic Caucus office, retained the Awans, the incumbents or their staffs encouraged newly-elected members to place the family on their payrolls.
Wasserman Schultz’s threat was caught on video (near end).
“I don’t know what they have, but they have something on someone. It’s been months at this point” with no arrests, said Pat Sowers, who has managed IT for several House offices for 12 years.
The Daily Caller reported noted that “a manager at a tech-services company that works with Democratic House offices said he approached congressional offices, offering their services at one-fourth the price of Awan and his Pakistani brothers, but the members declined. At the time, he couldn’t understand why his offers were rejected but now he suspects the Awans exerted some type of leverage over members.”
“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,” the tech-services company manager said.
A House IT employee who requested anonymity told the Daily Caller that tech workers who have taken over some of the offices found that computers in some — but not all — offices were “thin clients” that sent all data to an offsite server in violation of House policies. Additionally, staffers’ iPhones were all linked to a single non-government iTunes account, the IT employee said.
The report said that Democrats “were fiercely protective” of Awan’s crew “despite objectively shoddy work and requests for computer help routinely ignored for weeks.”
Politico reported the Awan crew is “accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”
One Democratic IT staffer said Awan “would come in and only help the member – he’d tell me this – because staff come and go. There was one staffer whose computer was broken and said, ‘I’m not going to pay my invoices until you fix my computer,’ and Imran went to the member, and they fired [the staffer who complained] that day. Imran has that power.”
Awan also billed the government $4 million for family members on the payroll “that never actually worked,” the Liberty Writers website reported on May 24.
Awan began working for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida in 2005, and his wife, his brother’s wife, and two of his brothers all appeared on the payrolls of various House Democrats soon after, payroll records show.
Wasserman Schultz, who was ousted as DNC chair after the disastrous hack during the 2016 election, renamed Awan an “advisor” to circumvent the Capitol Police’s computer network ban on the brothers, according to the Daily Caller report.
D.C. police investigating Awan confiscated a laptop from the former IT worker. Saying that the laptop belongs to her campaign, Wasserman Schultz threatened the D.C. police, saying there will be “consequences” if they do not return it to her.
Wasserman Schultz also sits on the Appropriations’ Legislative Branch subcommittee which determines the budget for the D.C. police.
“Someone, please tell me how it is that the media can blow up the Trump-Russia BS with zero evidence but one of the heads of the Democrats can threaten a cop on camera and nobody says a word,” Liberty Writers’ Danny Gold said.
Sowers told the Daily Caller, “I love the Hill but to see this clear lack of concern over what appears to be a major breach bothers me. Everyone has said for years they were breaking the rules, but it’s just been a matter of time.”
Another Democrat scandal: Major IT shakedown on the Hill filtered out by major media added by World Tribune on
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