Just when you think the House IT scandal out of a former DNC Chair's congressional office couldn't possibly get more unreal, it does. It's the story of Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz's corrupt IT aides that just keeps getting more unreal month after month for over a year now.
And with each new revelation, the mainstream media, the ever servile sycophants of the partisan political system, seem even more determined to sweep the story under the rug.
Before going into the latest revelation of staggering malfeasance in no less than 44 congressional offices, let's recap:
First of all– Imran, Abid, and Jamal Awan, three brothers, and two of their wives, Hina Alvi and Natalia Sova, collected over $4 million on the House payroll from July 2009 until last year. Congressional staff are far more likely to make a salary of $30,000 than the lavish six-figure salaries the Awans made, on par with the salaries of high-powered members' chiefs of staff.
Their unusually high salaries were cobbled together from multiple Democratic House members' offices, with at least one of the five on 44 different House members' payrolls for IT positions from 2009 to 2017. They had access to read each of these members' emails, many of whom sit on sensitive committees.
Well as it turns out multiple other House IT staffers have told journalists that the number of offices the Awans worked for was unusually high, and that they were being paid for mostly no-show positions. They never showed up to House network meetings, and they did very little actual work if any.
While facing investigation by the Capitol Police for stealing large sums of money worth of House computer equipment in an apparent procurement fraud scheme about a year ago, things just got stranger and stranger. If there was any possible way for the Awans to commit some kind of financial fraud, from bank fraud, to threatening and shaking down their own mother in law, to operating a shady car dealership named "CIA" which took $100,000 from an Iraqi government official who is currently a fugitive from U.S. authorities.
How could such questionable characters end up so deeply embedded in the U.S. Congress, with access to sensitive congressional data on 1 in 5 House Democrats' servers? Well that's where the latest revelation just gets even more unreal:
"Every one of the 44 House Democrats who hired Pakistan-born IT aides who later allegedly made 'unauthorized access' to congressional data appears to have chosen to exempt them from background checks, according to congressional documents.All of them appear to have waived background checks on Imran Awan and his family members, even though the family of server administrators could collectively read all the emails and files of 1 in 5 House Democrats, and despite background checks being recommended for such positions, according to an inspector general’s report. The House security policy requires offices to fill out a form attesting that they’ve initiated background checks, but it also includes a loophole allowing them to simply say that another member vouched for them.Among the red flags in Abid’s background were a $1.1 million bankruptcy; six lawsuits against him or a company he owned; and at least three misdemeanor convictions including for DUI and driving on a suspended license, according to Virginia court records. Public court records show that Imran and Abid operated a car dealership referred to as CIA that took $100,000 from an Iraqi government official who is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Numerous members of the family were tied to cryptic LLCs such as New Datown 2001, operated out of Imran’s residence, Virginia corporation records show. Imran was the subject of repeated calls to police by multiple women and had multiple misdemeanor convictions for driving offenses, according to court records."
Maybe close that loophole, Congress.