Until today, I had never heard of the Carteret County (North Carolina) Times.
But, having read its editorial on the awan scandal, I put it ahead of a great many far more famous media venues, which have determinedly censored news of this scandal from their readers’/viewers’ eyes and ears.
Here are a number of key excerpts (but plenty is left out, so I urge you to use my link and read all the rest):
Aside from the make believe fake news scandals Democrats and their allies in the liberal press continue to push about Russia and President Trump, a real scandal involving cybersecurity issues has enveloped Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
Ms. Schultz is the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and a long-time crony of Hillary Clinton, the two-time loser in her bid to become president.
At the heart of the scandal is Imran Awan, 37, a Pakistani-born Muslim. Hired as an information technologist by Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., in 2004, he started working for Ms. Schultz in 2005. Spreading himself around, he successfully parlayed his IT position into employment for several other Democrat House members, eight in all. He put his wife, Hina Alvi on the House payroll. He also put his brother Abid, then Abid’s wife, Natalia Sova, and Awan’s young brother, Jamal, 20, on the House payroll. Jamal was hired in 2014 with an annual salary of $160,000, which says Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel is what a chief of staff is paid.
For years, said Andrew McCarthy, senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review, “they had access to e-mails and electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees, and they were accessing the members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers and stealing computer equipment, including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of byes before making tracks.”
Though Democrats now say any access to sensitive information was “unauthorized,” Mr. McCarthy says in 2016 Democrat members of the House Intelligence Committee, in coordination with Ms. Schultz, ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee, wrote the appropriations subcommittee seeking funding so their staffers could obtain “Top Secret – Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearances, the highest level security classification. Awan family members were working for many of these members.
Knowing they were under investigation, Mr. Awan lied to the Congressional Federal Credit Union about his rental properties to get a $165,000 home equity loan, which he combined with a $283,000 transfer, all of which he wired to Pakistan Jan. 18.
In February, the Capital Police announced they were investigating the Awan family for stealing equipment and improperly accessing the House computer network. Every Democratic House member — except Ms. Schultz — fired Mr. Awan. And Rep. Meeks kept Hina Alvi on his payroll until Feb. 28.
In May, Capital Police seized a laptop belonging to Mr. Awan, and Ms. Schultz raised a tee-total meltdown, saying the computer belonged to her and demanded its return; otherwise, there would be “consequences.” So extraordinary was her vehemence that she hired an outside law firm to argue constitutional issues about the laptop, a rare step.
Following in his wife’s footsteps trying to avoid prosecution, Mr. Awan was arrested by the FBI July 24 as he attempted to board a plane at Dulles Airport. Not until he was arrested did Ms. Schultz fire him.
Calling the accusations “utterly unsupported, outlandish and slanderous,” Mr. Awan’s lawyer, Chris Gowen, a longtime associate of the Clinton’s, said, “This is clearly a right wing, media-driven prosecution by a United States Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute people for working while Muslim … part of a frenzy of anti-Muslim bigotry in the literal heart of our democracy.”
Though Democrats and their media allies are trying to make this into a simple case of bank fraud, it’s much, much more. It’s a clear violation of national cybersecurity.
Democrats are embarrassed and chagrined. Along with their liberal media allies, they should be.
Well said. Very well said.
Other than the editorial’s description of these people as “liberal” (they are anything but), my only disagreement is with its point, in the last sentence, that Democrats’ media allies will be embarrassed and chagrined.
So far, at least, they have shown no embarrassment at all. They are still trying, more and more desperately, to bury this huge – and growing – scandal.
But there will come a time, in the very near future I expect, when will no longer be able to do so. And when that time comes, it will be more than a little interesting to see/hear their explanations of why they buried this story for the past half year.
