by George Rasley, ConservativeHQ.com Editor
Imran Awan, the House Democrat’s information technology staffer who was busted for unauthorized access to government computers has been apprehended at Dulles Airport trying to flee to his native Pakistan.
Just yesterday we learned that FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to an individual who was interviewed by Bureau investigators in the case and a high level congressional source told our friends at Zero Hedge.
Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, the individual told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
The congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network” by Imran and four of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.
Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to Wasserman – Schultz.
Awan, who is rumored to have ties to Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency is the head of a gang of Pakistanis that included his brothers Abid and Jamal Awan, who were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reported on Tuesday, February 7, 2016.
The brothers, and their wives Hina R. Alvi (Imran Awan’s wife) and Natalia Sova are suspected of serious violations, including accessing members’ computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress reported our friend Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller. Alvi is a female House IT employee who works for many of the same members as the three brothers, as well as the House Democratic Caucus.
Among those whose computer systems may have been compromised is Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat who was previously the target of a disastrous email hack when she served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.
Inexplicably, or perhaps not, Awan has been kept on the payroll of Wasserman-Schultz despite the rapidly escalating scandal that potentially involves multiple federal crimes.
PJ Media’s Debra Heine says Imran Awan, is a longtime House staffer who worked for more than two dozen Democrats since 2004.
The five Muslim employees worked for at least three members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues, information and documents, including those related to the war with radical Islamic terrorism.
Jamal Awan handled IT for Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves on both the intelligence and foreign affairs panels.
Imran Awan handled IT for Rep. Gregory Meeks, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee where he is the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats.
Imran Awan also worked for Rep. Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat and one of two Muslims in the House of Representatives, and Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat. Both are members of the intelligence committee.
Security-sensitive jobs typically require background checks for credit and legal problems that can create pressures to cash in on access to secret information and documents. However, signs of trouble have long been visible in public records. The Congressional Credit Union repossessed Abid Awan’s car in 2009, and he declared bankruptcy in 2012, facing multiple lawsuits.
Luke Rosiak reports that despite the generous salaries, the four were involved in multiple suspicious mortgage transfers and a debt-evading bankruptcy. Abid Awan had more than $1 million in debts following a failed business and court documents filed claiming that Abid had stolen money and vehicles from associates in that business.
Abid Awan’s record includes numerous driving- and alcohol-related legal problems, including driving with a suspended or revoked license, court records show. He was found guilty of drunk driving a month before he started at the House, and was arrested for public intoxication a month after his first day.
Imran Awan has also been convicted of driving offenses serious enough to rise to the level of criminal misdemeanors, as well as using an illegal radar detector and driving an unregistered vehicle reported Rosiak.
Rosiak has reported that while working for Congress, the Pakistani brothers controlled a limited liability corporation called Cars International A (CIA), a car dealership with odd finances, which took–and did not repay–a $100,000 loan from one Dr. Ali Al-Attar.
Laundering money through used car dealerships is a known Hezbollah tactic. In 2011 the government filed the civil asset forfeiture action in New York against 30 car dealerships from Michigan to Florida.
The vehicles were then moved to West Africa and resold, and cash from the sales was mixed with profits from illegal drug distribution and funneled back to Lebanon to fund terrorist activities.
The government, which was trying to seize $400 million in assets in the case, lists Hezbollah as the most technically capable terrorist group in the world, with strong ties in Syria and Iran.
One of our intelligence community friends said calling their car dealership CIA was a tell and “a big middle finger to the US intelligence community.”
And it is very interesting how the car dealership’s finances were strangely interwoven with those of the U.S. House of Representatives. A car-dealing associate who was owed money by the brothers, Rao Abbas, also a Muslim, was placed on the congressional payroll.
Abbas is listed as the IT professional for former Democratic Representative Patrick Murphy, a then-member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and its Subcommittee on Department of Defense, Intelligence and Overhead Architecture and (irony alert) Subcommittee on the NSA and Cybersecurity.
Philip Giraldi, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, wrote that Dr. Ali Al-Attar “was observed in Beirut, Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official” in 2012–shortly after the loan was made.
Luke Rosiak reports that Giraldi, the former Central Intelligence Agency officer, wrote in the American Conservative in 2013 that Attar advised President George W. Bush’s key Iraq policy advisors that U.S. forces would be “greeted as liberators.”
“In late 2002 and early 2003, [then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz regularly met secretly with a group of Iraqi expatriates, consisting mostly of Shias but also including several Sunnis, who resided in the Washington area,” Giraldi wrote. “The Iraqis were headed by one Dr. Ali A. al-Attar.”
Attar’s prediction was wrong, and his qualifications for making it — supposedly based on what the D.C.-area Iraqis were hearing from relatives — were questionable because, although Attar was born in Iraq, his parents were Iranian.
But the U.S.-backed regime change served Attar well says Rosiak. In 2003 he told The New York Times that “he was one of four people chosen by General Garner to re-establish the Iraq Ministry of Health, and that he expected to be called Baghdad next week.”
And scamming the gullible George W. Bush administration into doing what it really wanted to do in Iraq wasn’t Dr. Ali Al-Attar’s only con.
Rosiak reports that in 2009, his medical license was suspended by Maryland for separate instances of billing patients and insurance companies for unneeded services.
While practicing medicine in Maryland and Virginia he allegedly defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies by billing for non-existent medical procedures. The FBI raided his offices in 2009 and the Department of Health and Human Services sued his business partner in 2011.
In November 2010, the Maryland State Board of Physicians brought charges of “unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine and failure to cooperate in a lawful investigation.”
Attar was indicted in March 2012 on separate tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI found he used multiple bank accounts to hide income. He fled back to Iraq to avoid prison reports Luke Rosiak.
According to Zero Hedge, the Awan brothers worked for more than 30 House and Senate Democrats, as well as Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The substantial scandal has raised questions about who may have been passed data which the Awans had access to, given Pakistan’s history of collaborating with a number of foreign countries that have demonstrated past willingness to influence U.S. politics.
But here’s where it gets scary.
These Muslim staffer’s services were so important to the Democrats, that on March 22, 2016, eight Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter, requesting that their 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 brothers were also employed by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, such as: Jackie Speier (D-CA), Andre Carson (D-IN), Joaquín Castro (D-TX), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Robin Kelly (D-IL), and Ted Lieu (D-CA). Lieu has since openly called for leaks by members of President Trump’s administration despite the fact that he may until recently have been under surveillance by a foreign entity note our friends at Zero Hedge.
One bombshell that has been all but ignored by the main stream media is that Imran Awan had access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s iPad password, meaning that the brothers also had direct access to the notorious DNC emails.
Why has none of this made the front page of The Washington Post, New York Times or the lead segment of the ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN evening news?
Jack Langer, spokesman for the intelligence committee, said the committee office has its own IT staff and security measures and classified information from the panel is not allowed to be sent to members’ personal offices.
That policy was also in place for State Department computer networks, yet classified material still found its way onto Hillary Clinton’s private email server and Huma Abedin’s personal laptop.
The House of Representatives, and especially the Capitol Police whose job is generally viewed as protecting Members from embarrassment, not counter-espionage, cannot be trusted to conduct a full and politics-free investigation of this national security disaster.
It is time this investigation moves beyond bank fraud and laptop theft to became a national security investigation with the FBI and counterintelligence agencies replacing the politics-tainted Capitol Police as the lead agency investigating how House Democrats handed over the backdoor to the House computer network to a Hezbollah and ISI connected cell that was paid some $5 million by the US government and then laundered the money through a car dealership and a crooked Iranian doctor.
Reprinted with permission from ConservativeHQ.com
