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.
Awan was arrested Monday night on charges of bank fraud, to which he has pled not guilty. As Forbes‘ Frank Miniter argued, however, his strange case “has all the feeling of the opening scene of a movie that might soon include political corruption and so much more.”
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.
PJ Media’s Debra Heine has been on the story since it broke in February of this year. Imran Awan and his Pakistani-born brothers, Abid and Jamal Awan, are under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission and stole equipment.
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.
Abid Awan had more than $1 million in debts following a failed business called Cars International that he ran in Falls Church, Va., from November 2009 to September 2010. Business associates said in court documents that Abid had stolen money and vehicles from them.
Just this past weekend, The Daily Caller reported that FBI agents seized damaged computer hard drives from the Awan family last February. According to sources, it looked like someone had “tried to destroy” the hard drives. Sound familiar?
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.
After Imran Awan’s arrest, it seems likely more scandals will be revealed.
After WikiLeaks published emails hacked from the DNC server, evidence suggested the Democratic Party had favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. An email to DNC staff actually discussed “pay to play letters.” Other emails revealed the blatant disregard and contempt with which Hillary Clinton and her staff viewed traditional Christianity.
This scandal also followed Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, in which it was discovered that the former secretary of State sent classified information on her private email server. Even former FBI Director James Comey, in declining to prosecute Clinton, called her actions “extremely careless,” and noted that her emails might have been accessed by foreign actors.
Democrats have jumped headlong into claims that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia in order to win the 2016 election. While Donald Trump Jr. did take a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on the pretext that she would give him opposition material against Hillary Clinton, that meeting bore no fruit. While Trump did suggest Russian President Vladimir Putin hack into Clinton’s email to reveal the missing emails, that also led to nothing.
Earlier on Thursday, however, it was revealed that Fusion GPS, the same Left-wing group that defended Planned Parenthood, attacked Mitt Romney donors, and compiled the Trump dossier, was hired by none other than Veselnitskaya to destroy the good name of a whistleblower murdered by Putin’s regime. Oh, and Fusion GPS did not register as representing a foreign agent.
Clinton and the Left seemingly have clearer ties to Russia than Trump ever did (remember Uranium One?), but the Left and the Democratic Party have squeezed the Trump-Russia narrative dry.
Could it be that they were trying to distract Americans from yet more brewing scandals? Could they be trying to hide just how divided the Democratic Party still is, in the wake of 2016? Could they be hiding their lack of a message?
Imran Awan, who was released pursuant to a high-intensity supervision program, knows all the answers, and he is wondering whether spilling the beans to the FBI will help him get back to Pakistan with all his cash. It’s time to grab the popcorn and watch the Democrats squirm.
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