Imran Awan arrested at Dulles Airport
Debbie Wasserman Schultz's IT staffer, Imran Awan was arrested this afternoon at the Dulles Airport while trying to flee the country. Awan, his two brothers along with two wives and another Pakistani, have been under investigation by the Capitol Police since February. The Awans worked for twenty Democrats in the House since 2008 or thereabouts. Most House Reps fired them upon learning of the investigation, but Wasserman Schultz kep Imran Awan on her payroll until now.
Just a day after reports emerged that the FBI had seized a number of "smashed hard drives" and other computer equipment from the residence Imran Awan, the IT aide of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, we learn that Awan has been captured at the Dulles airport while attempted to flee the country. According to Fox News, Awan has been charged with bank fraud.
This story is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption within the Democratic party and hopefully the arrest of Imran Awan, who was supposedly the ring leader of the financial scam and what I believe to be a spy ring, will finally begin to blow apart the systemic corruption that permeates not only the Democratic party, but our entire government. Zero Hedge has more on this story.
It is time to shed a bright spotlight on just this one facet of the deeply embedded corruption that festers within our government. This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are far more heinous things going on involving the Clintons and many top government officials including human trafficking, pedophilia, and illegal weapons trafficking.
Comments
I guess I am confused
I am trying to figure out how you came to this conclusion, especially from my essay which is mainly about corruption. If the shoe fits the Democrats, then so be it. But the way I have been seeing it for some time, is that corruption is an equal opportunity gig.
If the Democrats want to bring themselves down, so be it. My problem with the Democrats more than the Republicans is the the Democrats continue to try to cloak themselves as being for the average person. That is utter bunk.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
The primary reason
I stopped writing at daily kos was because very few wanted to be bothered about war and imperialism. I'd get a cadre of 20-30 rec's but anything hating on the republicans would usually get the rec list. I see the same thing happening here, only with the democratic party and I now feel the same way about posting essays here at C99.
Ya, that's my problem but I'd thot I'd tell you anyway.
I would like to read more
About war and imperialism. And I hope you keep posting such essays.
I imagine we have a lot of lurkers. I think there's value in spreading the message, regardless of upvotes.
Actually, there is a link
between the wholesale corruption we are seeing in our government and our wars and imperialism. Without the corruption, it is doubtful we would be seeing war after war needlessly killing millions of innocent people and creating more terrorism while the population of the United States grows poorer and poorer. It is VERY inter-connected and I personally believe this particular scandal is tied to illegal arms trade.
In a way, it pisses me off that you seem to think I am promoting some sort of conspiracy against the Democratic party and recreating dkos 2.0 here. I have been very clear in nearly every essay that I have written here that I blame everyone who is promoting neoliberalism world wide which leads to these wars. And I went beyond just being a keyboard complainer and actually tried to do a little something about it in my corner of the world. Until last summer when it was disbanded (not my choice), I spent 4.5 years with a local Peace vigil trying to educate people about our wars of choice and US imperialism.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
My apologies.
I didn't make it clear I wasn't talking about you, but the blog's membership and what is most popular as a subject.
@Big Al
My Feelings About the Republican Party
by Can't Stop the Signal
I'm from Florida. I was here in 2000 when George W. Bush and his brother stole the election. When Tom DeLay sent staffers down from Washington to invade an elections supervisor's office in Dade County where votes were being counted and had them scream and shake their fists at the vote counters until the people were intimidated and left. The votes were never counted. In Duval County, where I was, I later found out that boxes of votes were literally thrown into the Atlantic. I and my boyfriend were two of only three white people at the subsequent protests. We lived in a time and place when discussing Bush in an ordinary tone at a restaurant, if you were critical of him, brought glares from all the other tables. It was like being half suffocated all the time.
It happened again in 2004, only worse for me, because I had become a poll watcher and I had to watch some fucker walk away with the memory card to the voting machine because the Bush-appointed supervisor of elections said to let him go. Even the guy running the polling place knew what was happening, and didn't like it, but like most Republicans, he fell in line when someone in authority in his party told him to do something. It was one of the worst nights of my life, and I've never gotten over it.
I can't really talk about the depth of my feelings about Jeb Bush. If you weren't in Florida at the time, you cannot imagine what it was like to go through those things and then watch the country settle around the result in a "Well, we'll fix it later, and we're sure it will turn out OK anyway" kind of way. You have no idea what it was like waiting for the Democrats in DC, the national party, to send help and having no help come. Having our own Senator, whom I actually respected, sit on his hands while we were treated like that. Having the party not only not care about our rights, but also apparently not to care about its own chances of winning either.
It was the first time I left the party. I didn't come back for five years. But all that time I continued to work with Democrats because, above everything, I was absolutely against the Bushes and their party, now and forever.
Because of that passionate opposition, I gave up my career to work to get as many Democrats elected as possible. I did that for five years. After the way they had treated us. Why? Because I hated the Bushes just that much, and it seemed like there was more than one faction in the Democratic party, and that at least one of them would be willing to oppose the Bushes, their politics, and their policies. Despite my personal resentment at the way we were treated, breaking the Bushes' power seemed more important--and I thought it was an attainable goal. At the end of that time, I had become a campaign manager. I won a campaign that was supposed to end in a landslide defeat by a few hundred votes. Afterwards, not only was I told "Thanks for the unlikely election win, now please leave quietly through the back, because you're not suited for politics," I could also see that all my policy goals were off the table for the national party, and that that condition was likely to be permanent. In fact, most of the Democrats in DC were pushing Bush policies. In other words, my passionate opposition to Republicans caused me to be a dupe for the leaders of the other party and I ended up working for the very thing that had hurt me, my people, and my state. The other head of the Hydra.
Nobody has the right to tell me that I'm not interested in opposing Republicans or that I don't hate them enough. There's not a single Floridian, not even the Republicans, that hasn't been hurt by the Republican party and the crime family at the head of it, and some of us are more aware of it than others. I am quite aware of it.
What I wasn't aware of is that their criminal nature is news.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
A bitter lesson, I am sure.
@Alligator Ed I'll never
I'll never be the person I was before those events, that's for sure.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Personally, I concentrate on what they (Dem lawmakers)
do, because the bulk of 'casual' Dem Party voters aren't fooled by Republicans--they're duped, year after year, by corporatist neoliberal Democratic lawmakers.
If that weren't the case, the Dem Party wouldn't have swung so far to the right, as it has since the Reagan Era.
Mollie
“I believe in the redemptive powers of a dog’s love. It is in recognition of each dog’s potential to lift the human spirit and therefore– to change society for the better, that I fight to make sure every street dog has its day.”
--Stasha Wong, Secretary, Save Our Street Dogs (SOSD)
Schumer and the Democratic Party Leadership
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
They are two heads of the same monster
and elections have all of the drama and authenticity of a professional wrestling match. Proof of this is the fact that we've elected a WWE Hall of Famer as POTUS.
President Camacho would have been a better choice.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
As usual - what you said! Exactly, perfect, and thank you!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I don't care what color the Corrupt are
whether red, blue, green, yellow or polka-dot. But I will tell you, in answer to your comment/complaint, that I find the red and blue ones surprisingly tasty.
@Alligator Ed Pork-fed?
Pork-fed?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Breaking news on the Anwan case
Finally! Gee Debbie, why did this take so long for you to fire him for not doing the things that would have seen any American thrown in jail for doing, but for BANK FRAUD.
Isn't that something that this country doesn't prosecute any longer?
Yep. Lynch didn't prosecute HSBC after it was found laundering money for drug cartels and we know that Obama didn't want to upset his donor or masters, take your pick.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
That's not all he was caught doing...
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Thanks for keeping us informed
This looks like it could grant some insight into behind the scenes activity, if the principals survive.
Something must have changed. He smashes his drives, tries to transfer his cash, and was on his way out of the country. The "jig", as the saying goes, was clearly "up", and it was time to "get out of Dodge". If this hadn't come up suddenly, he could have set up a recurring monthly transfer to his family back in Pakistan which probably isn't suspicious, and he could have done it for years. Sending it all at once raises flags.
So until recently he felt secure, then it all changed.
Speculation: he was working for someone else, maybe doing some stuff on his own on the side. Who would have been interested in getting dirt on Democratic congresspeople, perhaps to get leverage over them? Who might be in a position to protect him, but might have recently withdrawn that protection?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Great insight.
Thank you for making these comments. This isn't a great insight, but is it possible the forensic evidence provided to Mueller and to the President by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) this week may have teeth? Is it possible the Awans are connected to the server or download records or something? I am so non-tech I may be reaching. What do you think?
That's what I'm wondering as well
Did he have physical access to DNC servers, legitimately or otherwise? If what the VIPS are saying pans out, that it was someone standing in the room and thus not hackers (Russian or otherwise), it begs the question who had access? As I've been saying for a lifetime, if you don't have physical security for your data you don't have security.
"Not a Russian hacker" is not the same as "not getting a paycheck from spooks", it just means they weren't doing it over the net. Also, I can't think why someone working for Russia would forge metadata to implicate them.
I think Awan's situation fell apart in a matter of days, maybe hours, if he was being this sloppy. What happened within a week of his arrest?
When did that VIPS information come out again?
Again, he may have been freelancing a bit on his own. Stealing DNC files might have been a crime of opportunity (steal now, look for a buyer later, fudge it to make it look like the Russians did it).
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
You make
a good point that the obvious incongruity exists:
But I can just see the CIA and its media saying that it's proof that it was Russia because it looks so obviously that it wouldn't be Russia.
Still, in this part I disagree with you:
If Awan copied the DNC emails to a storage device, he could have given it to anyone, and the CIA could have created the false attribution to Russia later. There could have been any number of cutouts.
This was something I noticed when I tried to pay attention to the anthrax investigation over the years. The administration first tried to make it unassailable that it was a state actor, Iraq. When that turned out to be false they switched to the lone nut. And then it was devilishly impossible to solve because it had to be someone who could have driven from a lab that had the strain to the mailbox in Princeton NJ. It had to be one person. There was no acknowledgement that there could have been a series of cutouts.
Good point
The forged metadata could have been added by anyone who touched it after it was stolen.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
@WoodsDweller Excellent analysis.
Excellent analysis. Whoever it is is either real sure that the investigation into him will be contained, or doesn't give a shit whether Debbie and a lot of others go down.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
A video from TYT politics
Debbie Wasserman Schultz Staffer Arrested!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPkh38AzSgw]
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Nice to see Jordan once again doing honest reporting.
Thanks WD for your many fine comments to this thread.
On a personal, ad hominem, and just not nice note, filled with animus and rage, I refer to DWS as Debbie Washerwoman Shultz. HardBastard refers to her as Debbie Wasserman Dragonface. I like his name for her better than mine.
Here's some new speculation to chew on.
I read the comments thread (rabid rightwing sewer) on ZeroHedge and came up with this interesting speculation:
I had not considered how stupid, from an IT skills POV, it was to wire transfer money. Either they are incredibly bad IT people (possible, as they seem more like grifters/blackmailers than techies) or the transfer was a deliberate false flag (by whom, for what purpose, I cannot figure out at all).
Anyway, fresh meat. Enjoy. I love threads like this.
Another relevant "dog that didn't bark" comment
----
Notice that it was not DHS who grabbed him at the airport. It was the Capitol Police. So, is DHS just incompetent, or part of whatever mess the Awan family is in?
My bad. They say "they let it go thru". Still, it begs question
Why did they let the money and the wife leave the country??? But, this is old ground.
Pages