Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on a massive scandal that has gone largely unreported, based on an interview on Liberty Nation Radio with Luke Rosiak, author of Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats.
Have we had enough of scandals -- fake or real -- in Washington? On one side, we’ve been hearing for two years about accusations of collusion between Trump and Russia -- no proof found. From the other side comes claims that innocent Trump campaign operatives were drawn into an FBI trap to trigger an unfounded investigation -- plenty of proof on that one.
Some have called it the biggest scandal in congressional history...
But if you think you have a handle on all the scandals pervading the DC swamp, think again. There was another truly shocking turn of events involving Congress that flew mostly under the radar in the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign. An unvetted Pakistani national given to blackmail gained access to the computer files of more than 30 Democrats in the House of Representatives, and from there the story reads like a spy novel. Some have called it the biggest scandal in congressional history, notwithstanding the lack of publicity surrounding it.
Luke Rosiak, investigative reporter at The Daily Caller, has unmasked the scandal in his new book, Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats. And he dove into the details on Liberty Nation Radio.
Luke Rosiak: Imran Awan was an IT guy for Congress for many years. He was working for Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other members of Congress. In the heat of the 2016 election, actually the same week that the DNC was hacked, Congress' own internal police caught him hacking Congress. So although he was the IT guy, he was taking much more data than he should have had access to, impersonating members of Congress, and logging into their accounts and so on, and shuttling data off the House network and taking steps to hide what he was doing.
So obviously, especially with the context of what was going on in the DNC, this was a huge deal. And yet no one ever heard about it from month to month to month. Even after that, you never heard anything about it.
So it turned out after I pulled the thread on this for two years and found everywhere I looked literally just James Bond stuff, just the absolute wildest things. This guy was taking money from an Iranian government minister and laundering it through a front company called CIA LLC. After he was banned from Congress, he had a back door into the House network, because he was impersonating an intelligence staffer. The list goes on and on.
So, they kicked the can down the road until after the election. They let him continue to log in to Congress this whole time while they're building this Russian narrative. After the election, they still don't want this to really go public. So they kick him off the network and they fire him, but they don't arrest him. That's when I find out that he's still got access. He goes into Debbie Wasserman Schultz' office at midnight, takes her laptop, after he's been banned from Congress, and leaves it in a phone booth. So as I say, truly this is a surreal tale. As I investigated it, I just couldn't believe what I was learning, and yet this was concealed from the American public.
Imran Awan
Tim Donner: Did Mr. Awan have so much on so many Democrats that there was a great hesitancy to really bring down the full weight of the law on him?
Luke Rosiak: Actually that's what he himself said. So a couple of reasons why they wanted this to go away. The first is the Russian narrative. They didn't want this competing hack involving Pakistanis that they had failed to vet. And there were a series of very embarrassing missteps by the Democrats that allowed this happen, and incompetence.
Then the other thing is, what you just said. I mean, this guy had access to everything. I think there was the worry that he would release it if they didn't kind of make this thing go away. So his own wife goes to the FBI and says, "My husband told me that he's a mole in Congress from Pakistan. He told me that he knows so much that he can never be prosecuted. So it's okay." And then she says, "I'm going to go to the FBI." And he goes, "Well, I've been surveilling you. I've got videotape, a sex tape. I'm going to release that in Pakistan if you come forward."
So here we are. This is a guy hacking Congress and he's caught, and he starts blackmailing people to prevent them from going to the FBI. His stepmother comes forward, and it's virtually the identical story. She says, "I've been held in captivity by this guy to prevent me from coming forward. He said he's going to have my family killed in Pakistan." They basically intimidate this woman, and witnesses are scared. Evidence starts disappearing, and really this remarkable coverup is in full swing.
The funniest part of all is the Democrats who are working frantically behind the scenes to orchestrate this coverup. Publicly they kind of say, "Oh, what are you talking about? That sounds crazy. It must be a conspiracy theory. I bet it's Donald Trump somehow behind this being Islamophobic." Meanwhile, these poor women, who are, of course, Muslim, are basically begging for their lives, and they're being hung out to dry while this guy's being protected.
-
In part two of this series, Mr. Rosiak discusses the Capitol police investigation, how a server with critical evidence suddenly disappeared, and the media’s refusal to cover this scandal.
