Awan Plot Thickens As NY Democrat Yvette Clarke "Quietly" Wrote-Off $120,000 Of Missing Tech Equipment

Awan Plot Thickens As NY Democrat Yvette Clarke "Quietly" Wrote-Off $120,000 Of Missing Tech Equipment

When we reported last week that Imran Awan and his wife had been indicted by a grand jury on 4 counts, including bank fraud and making false statements related to some home equity loans, we also noted that those charges could simply be placeholders for further developments yet to come. Now, according to a new report from the Daily Caller, the more interesting component of the FBI's investigation could be tied to precisely why New York Democrat Representative Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to simply write-off $120,000 in missing electronics tied to the Awans.

A chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to sign away a $120,000 missing electronics problem on behalf of two former IT aides now suspected of stealing equipment from Congress, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Clarke’s chief of staff at the time effectively dismissed the loss and prevented it from coming up in future audits by signing a form removing the missing equipment from a House-wide tracking system after one of the Awan brothers alerted the office the equipment was gone. The Pakistani-born brothers are now at the center of an FBI investigation over their IT work with dozens of Congressional offices.

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Meanwhile, according to the Daily Caller, CDW Government could have been in on the scheme.

They’re suspected of working with an employee of CDW Government Inc. — one of the Hill’s largest technology providers — to alter invoices in order to avoid tracking. The result would be that no one outside the office would notice if the equipment disappeared, and investigators think the goal of the scheme was to remove and sell the equipment outside of Congress.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-21/awan-plot-thickens-ny-democrat-...

Of course we're all supposed to look the other way while giving these lying creeps our support and our money. And in return they claim the right to lie, cheat, and disenfranchise us and to look the other way when the 'party' gets nabbed for corruption. And they wonder why donations are down.

Go figure

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Raggedy Ann's picture

I read it all over the MSM this morning, so it's old news here. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Just kidding!
Diablo

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Amanda Matthews's picture

@Raggedy Ann

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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

Amanda Matthews's picture

@Raggedy Ann

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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

Raggedy Ann's picture

@Amanda Matthews
I like it! Good

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

among many possibilities currently being explored by "conspiracy theorists" investigating using crowd sourcing and YouTube reportage. Other possibilities include a massive web of car theft, illegal export of depleted uranium, import of drugs, and a spy ring trading on state secrets. Reselling IT equipment, presumably at below retail pricing, is positively boring by comparison.

I have been following George Webb for several weeks and confess to being more than a little curious to find out how the many pieces of the puzzle might come together. If even a small percentage of the possibilities pan out, this will make Watergate look like small potatoes. If nothing else, the investigative odyssey is interesting. The "followers" seem to be all over the political and CT spectrum, and the reliability of the "sources" runs the gamut as well. If nothing else it's good entertainment!

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49
gear as missing -- not stolen, just missing. that's an unlikely thing for him to do if he's doing something nefarious with the gear. though maybe not -- it preserves deniability.

the whole story implies a bizarre degree of improbability ... like ... a chief of staff to a member of the House is going to get him/herself involved in a felony scam just to score a share of middle 5 figures? really? this is chump change compared to the kinds of money these people routinely fuck around with. (Note, BTW, that the headline and the lead both imply that Clarke herself signed off on this, but the actual report says that it was her chief-of-staff.)

but i guess some people just can't resist the lure of easy money. or maybe the C-o-S had a gambling/hooker/drug problem that needed financing. beats me.

my guess, at any rate, is that this is just a bit of unrelated scammery that turned up in the Awan investigation because they were connected to so many different House offices. i wonder how many other scammers are now sweating it out at their desks, waiting for the shoe to drop. & maybe stealing and reselling House gear was a sideline for the Awans. or maybe they really did want to deliver the info intact to somebody else. either way, they report the stuff missing, tell the C-o-S this would be really embarrassing to them if it came out, and offer her 20K to close her eyes and put her fingers in her ears.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
were to turn up in the near future (hint, hint), this "lost" equipment report might throw enough shade to make a deniability claim plausible. I agree that the story, as written by Durden, makes very little sense as a stand alone event.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49

Need to make sure it covers all of the what ifs.

I don't know why they just didn't get it over and hire bin Laden to take care of government servers. I heard he was pretty good on computers.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

bondibox's picture

@UntimelyRippd It's such a paltry figure that I'm incredulous. It makes me wonder where the equipment fit in, within the congressional system. Typically government issued laptops undergo a rigorous maintenance regimen, have their MAC addresses entered in the Wifi routers, etc. So if I was a congressman who wanted a laptop that I could use at work that wouldn't be seen by those pesky IT snoops...

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F the F'n D's

gulfgal98's picture

@bondibox that the Awans set up the Blackberries that Congress people and their staff used so that they would sync with several laptops that were hidden in the the Capitol complex. Please note that I am not a tech person, so I may not have this exactly right. One of those laptops was found by the Capitol police and that is why DWS wanted it back because she knew what was on it. Then apparently these laptops sent the data to a private server that Imran Awan had.

This system allowed Awan to collect everything that the Congress people and their staff had on their Blackberries without them knowing. Jackie Spier and DWS got top secret clearance for Imran Awan and he had access to all the info from House Foreign Affairs and House Intelligence Committees.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@UntimelyRippd

Maybe all that equipment consisted of computers/other devices that went missing because it had communications on it that got smashed with a hammer so that nobody could recover the details? There seems to be a lot of that about... especially when you think of Wikileaks and Seth Rich.

This totally does not seem to want to post - sorry of it doubles.

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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.

gulfgal98's picture

@ovals49 I have been following George Webb, among others, on this case for several months now. I just read an article published in the National Review about what is missing from the indictments of Imran Awan and Hina Alvi. Yes, I know that the National Review is right wing, but I found this article to be fairly consistent with what I have learned thus far.

What we are seeing thus far is relatively small potatoes stuff as far as indictments go. IMO, this is about a spy ring that may either have ties to the CIA and/or the Clintons. There is probably black mail of Congress people too as well as complicity of some members of Congress.

Unfortunately, I am afraid that the investigations may stop with these indictments. Verifiable fact: Hina Alvi (Imran Awan's wife) was allowed to leave that country even though FBI stopped her at the airport and found that she was carrying an illegal amount of cash upon her when she tried to board the plane. The FBI allowed her to leave the country with the cash anyway even though she was the subject of an active criminal investigation by the FBI. Something does not smell right about all of this. I believe that very high up people are colluding against we the people's interests in this case.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98
she and Imran got several months to get their affairs in order, including transferring hundreds of thousands of possibly I'll gotten dollars to Pakistan, all while they were under criminal investigation.

The indictment that was returned was narrowly circumscribed and the weakest of tea. Important people must want the Awan story to fade away as quickly as possible, with as little damage to the Awans, who know way too much about the inner workings of Congress.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

gulfgal98's picture

@gulfgal98 I found this article explaining why the FBI allowed Imran Awan's wife, Hina Alvi, to fly to Pakistan even though she was under a criminal investigation by said FBI and even though she was carrying an illegal amount of cash from the US.

...(Alvi) was never detained or forced to stay in the United States. Her arrest in fact was blocked by then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI sources said.

So federal agents and Capitol Police watched as the former Democratic congressional aide and suspected bank fraudster stepped onto Qatar Air1ines Flight 708 to Doha, Qatar, on her way to Lahore, Pakistan with her three daughters, bulging luggage and $12,400 in undocumented cash — a federal crime in itself. Awan (Alvi) had essentially been given a license to disappear from the clutches of US law enforcement, never likely to return to the United States. She was in the wind, courtesy of the FBI.

This is looking very, very dirty and ugly.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@ovals49
Why would anyone want depleted uranium? It's a waste product that remains after the isotope that produces fission has been extracted. The US Government gives it to munitions makers, who turn it into socially useful products, to avoid the cost of disposing of it safely.

Suppose similarly that the IT equipment is sold for minimal profit in order to make it disappear (widely dispersed) after the valuable material, the information that was on the computers, is sold for a much greater profit.

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@FuturePassed

The US Government gives it to munitions makers, who turn it into socially useful products, to avoid the cost of disposing of it safely.

Products like armor piercing projectiles that remain safely disposed of on the battlefields when the shooting stops?

AFAIK, These munitions are far more effective than steel jacketed conventional rounds and are not meant to be put in the hands of our enemies overseas or civilian gun enthusiasts. War materials have always enjoyed a vibrant black market.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49
a snark tag was necessarily for the "socially useful products" comment.

You are correct that depleted uranium is more effective than steel jacketed munitions. If the decision were made entirely on grounds of effectiveness there are metals that work as well or better than depleted uranium. But free is free and the government wants them to do it.

Obviously I did not make my point clearly and I appreciate a second chance. The United States is disposing a toxic waste product on a large scale across the Middle East. There is some evidence that American servicemen and servicewomen have been affected. Cancer rates of populations in areas where the munitions were used have been compared to neighboring populations. The results are horrible. The policy of using depleted uranium is worse than salting the earth.

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Azazello's picture

From The National Review: The Very Strange Indictment ...

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Raggedy Ann's picture

@Azazello
who's involved. Cover-up is not strange - it is covering up something. THEY are covering up all kinds of something. If this ever blows, it might take quite a few down. Get the popcorn!

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

gulfgal98's picture

@Raggedy Ann this has the potential to take more than a few people down. The Awans are the tip of the iceberg of corruption in DC. Is there anyone honest enough and brave enough to take on the Clinton/CIA/other Deep State actors on?

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Raggedy Ann's picture

@gulfgal98
This is the tip of the iceberg. It will be interesting to see if they decide to drill down and hold ALL responsible. This is very curious, indeed.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

gulfgal98's picture

@Azazello in my comment above. I had not read down far enough to see you did too. Sorry. Blush

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@Azazello Too bad that the US PTB and their political and other lackeys are so lawless - lucky that they're so blatant about it now, though - if anyone was prepared to do anything about it, with the system so thoroughly corrupted...

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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.

orlbucfan's picture

with a grain of salt. The DWS-led DNC was crooked and incompetent. Where are the indictments? HRC was crooked and incompetent, too. So what? (Rec'd!!)

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

gulfgal98's picture

@orlbucfan should be taken with a grain of salt. However the article that both Azazello and I referenced is supported by information that I have read at other sources. With the MSM blackout of anything negative about the DNC or the Clintons, we must use other sources to get our information. When I find multiple sources which corroborate each other from more than one original source, I am willing to use them, especially when the information provided fits an observed pattern.

This whole Awan brothers scandal is beyond partisan politics as is nearly all the Deep State stuff that is going on. I have been following this story for months now and feel as though I can discern what is truly fake news in this regard.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98
is big enough that the MSM could not completely ignore it. Now it's a matter of trying to fill the large blank spaces, a process that necessarily involves a degree of speculation.

It's important. Let's go through the speculation and see whether we can find some additional pieces that fit.

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@FuturePassed
September 1, the Friday before Labor Day long weekend. Couldn't be a better day to bury a story. Our MSM has the attention span of a two year old. Whether the case proceeds to trial, is pled out or dismissed entirely, it is unlikely to come to the attention of many Americans.

For an aggressive prosecutor the Awan case could become the unraveling of a larger and far more significant investigation. It's already clear that's not about to happen with this prosecutor or this case.

Did I mention that Bill Clinton's law firm is defending the Awans? That's some big guns to bring to a minor bank fraud case that is ostensibly only tangentially linked to DWS and the DNC.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49

The Clintons are hip-deep in, and - under cover of the corrupt governmental-PTB-/corporate/suborned media-shielding - peeing all over, everything everywhere there's a buck to be made or power to steal, aren't they?

No wonder their corporate media propaganda projection beams 'Putin!!!/Russia!!! Everywhere And Causing All Evil!!!' in the attempt to con others onto believing that that it isn't them and their various paymasters... while trying to censor the world from mentioning the facts/noticing reality.

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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.

someone, or someones has been protecting the Awan clan. These people do not appear to be sophisticated political operators. Details about their various schemes, cons, and petty frauds, outlined in this Daily Mail article, would fit the profile of blackmailers more than a spies. Their crimes do not appear to have been all that serious, but the fact that they were being subsidized while committing them, and allowed to operate with such apparent impunity, raises some very serious questions.

The question is, who is protecting them, and why? More than one highly placed official would be my guess. Evidently DWS is somewhere near the center of it.

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native