Top Democrat IT Aide Arrested While Trying to Leave US for Pakistan
July 27, 2017 by admin
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WASHINGTON —
A top technology aide to Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives was arrested Monday at a Washington airport while attempting to leave the United States for Pakistan.
Imran Awan, an IT aide who worked for the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and several other congressional Democrats, was arrested on fraud charges related to a housing loan he received.
Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, who also worked as a technology aide for Democrats, requested and received a home loan from Congressional Federal Credit Union (CFCU) for $165,000 under the pretense that the couple would occupy the home, according to Awan’s arrest warrant. The couple didn’t occupy the house, but instead rented out the property to tenants, in violation of their loan agreement.
Within a week of accepting the loan money on January 12, 2017, Alvi requested a wire transfer form from the CFCU branch located within the U.S. Capitol in the amount of $283,000 to be sent to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
According to the arrest warrant, a representative from the bank called Alvi on January 18, 2017, to confirm the purpose of the outgoing wire transfer.
“The person answering the call, who was a male, pretended that he was Alvi,” the arrest warrant says.
While on the call, the bank representative asked the purpose of the wire transfer, to which the male pretending to be Alvi responded that it was to be used for “funeral arrangements.” The bank representative informed the man that funeral arrangements wouldn’t necessarily qualify as an acceptable reason for the wire.
“After a long pause, the male said that the reason for the wire was ‘buying property’,” and the representative accepted that reasoning before initiating the wire transfer to Pakistan, the warrant says.
Bank records showed that $165,000.00 of $283,000.00 wired to Pakistan came from the illicit home loan.
A little more than a month after wiring the money to Pakistan, Alvi and her three children boarded a plane to Pakistan and never returned to the U.S.
According to the arrest warrant, the children “were abruptly taken out of school without notifying” their teachers, and investigators do not “believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.”
Awan purchased a ticket for a flight departing from Washington to Pakistan Monday night, but was arrested at the airport by federal agents prior to boarding.
Awan pleaded not guilty to the bank fraud charge Tuesday during an arraignment in federal court in Washington. He was released but was forced to turn over all his passports and wear a GPS monitoring device.
Chris Gowen, Awan’s attorney, told Politico the arrest is “clearly a right-wing media-driven prosecution by a United States Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute people for working while Muslim.”
“A quick glance at what the government filed in court today confirms the lack of evidence or proof they have against my client,” he said.
In March, a group of House Democrats fired Awan and Alvi after they allegedly stole IT equipment from congressional members and may have exposed House information online. The couple had been barred from accessing House computer networks since early February.
Two of Awan’s relatives, Abid Awan and Jamal Awan also worked as IT aides for Democrats, and are linked to the criminal investigation.
Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as chairwoman of the DNC last year after emails released by WikiLeaks appeared to show the organization working to unfairly support Hillary Clinton over her former rival Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary process.
Awan and his relatives began working for congressional Democrats more than a decade ago, and records show Awan made nearly $2 million since starting IT work on Capitol Hill in 2004. His wife, Alvi, who started working for Democrats in 2007, earned more than $1.3 million during that time.
The two were considered shared employees, which means they worked for dozens of Democrats at the same time, and no one member paid their entire salaries.
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Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas Will Be Nominated as Religious Ambassador
July 27, 2017 by admin
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In the ambassadorship, Mr. Brownback would lead the Office of International Religious Freedom, which is under the umbrella of the State Department and charged with promoting religious freedom as a foreign policy objective.
Mr. Brownback’s popularity has plummeted in recent years as the state slashed services and struggled to meet its revenue projections, problems that many attributed to Mr. Brownback’s signature tax-cutting doctrine. Despite Republicans’ dominance in Kansas, the party suffered losses in last year’s legislative elections.
Kansas lawmakers rolled back Mr. Brownback’s tax policies this year, with Democrats and moderate Republicans banding together to override the governor’s veto and raise taxes. Mr. Brownback has also clashed with some members of his own party on Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which he vetoed this year.
Mr. Brownback’s policies were seen as a test of the Republican doctrine that lowering the tax burden on businesses would attract employers to the state and help the economy grow. It was being closely watched by conservatives across the country to see how it might affect Kansas. But the growth never came.
Mr. Brownback will leave Kansas at a time of uncertainty over funding for public education. The Kansas Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the constitutionality of the state’s new school funding mechanism.
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“He leaves behind a legacy of failed leadership,” said State Representative Melissa Rooker, a moderate Republican who has frequently opposed Mr. Brownback’s policies. She said she did not know what to expect from Mr. Colyer, a Republican and an ally of Mr. Brownback’s, because he was not involved in the day-to-day dealings of the Legislature.
Representative Jim Ward, the Democratic leader in the Kansas House, said he was “not surprised” to hear of the appointment, which has been rumored in Topeka for months.
“I’m not going to miss him,” Mr. Ward said. “He has left a state in carnage and destruction.”
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Mr. Ward said that he believed the governor “had the background” for his new role, but that “he hasn’t embraced diversity” consistently in Kansas. “Hopefully, this job that he’ll step into, he’ll realize that Americans are of all kinds of faith,” Mr. Ward said.
Representative Ron Ryckman Jr., a Republican and the House speaker, said Mr. Brownback was “uniquely qualified” for the ambassadorship. “I wish him all the best in his new post and would like to express my gratitude for his extensive service to the State of Kansas,” he said.
Kris Kobach, the Republican secretary of state, who is running to succeed Mr. Brownback, said, “He is the first truly conservative governor that Kansas has had in the last 40 years, and so he definitely made history in that respect.”
Mr. Kobach added, “On the other hand, though, he faced a real battle at the end to preserve the tax cuts, and I wish he had won.”
In announcing the intended nomination, the White House noted that Mr. Brownback, a former United States senator and congressman, “worked actively on the issue of religious freedom in multiple countries and was a key sponsor of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.”
Mr. Brownback, a father of five who comes from a farming family, has also been a lawyer, a state secretary of agriculture and a one-time presidential candidate.
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