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paralКриминальный политический триллер.
DaylyCaller:
Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology (IT) aide was arrested Monday attempting to board a flight to Pakistan after wiring $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to that country.
DaylyCaller:
Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology (IT) aide was arrested Monday attempting to board a flight to Pakistan after wiring $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to that country.
Imran Awan, a Pakistani-born IT aide, had access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Wasserman Schultz used for Democratic National Committee business before she resigned as its head in July 2016.
House authorities told members in February that Imran and his relatives were suspects in a criminal investigation into theft and IT abuses, and they were banned from the Capitol network.
Wasserman Schultz has refused to fire Imran, despite his being a known criminal suspect in a cybersecurity probe for months, and has blocked Capitol Police from searching a laptop they confiscated because it was tied to him.
Wasserman Schultz’s IT Aide Arrested At Airport After Wiring $300k To Pakistan From House Office
LUKE ROSIAK
Investigative Reporter
5:41 PM 07/25/2017
Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology (IT) aide was arrested Monday attempting to board a flight to Pakistan after wiring $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to that country.
He attempted to leave the country hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group revealed that he is the target of an FBI investigation, and the FBI apprehended him at the airport.
Credit union officials permitted the wire to go through, and his wife has already fled the country to Pakistan, after police confronted her at the airport and found $12,000 in cash hidden in her suitcase but did not stop her from boarding, court documents show.
“On January 18, 2017 at 12:09 pm, an international wire transfer request form was submitted [at the Congressional Federal Credit Union] at the Longworth House Office Building in the District of Columbia, in the amount of $283,000.00, to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan,” according to an affidavit obtained by TheDCNF.
Imran Awan, a Pakistani-born IT aide, had access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Wasserman Schultz used for Democratic National Committee business before she resigned as its head in July 2016.
In March, his wife Hina Alvi, who also was on the House payroll, withdrew her children from school and left the country, the affidavit says. The Capitol Police confronted her at the airport but could not stop her. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted a search of Alvi’s bags immediately prior to her boarding the plane and located a total of $12,400.00 in U.S. cash inside. Alvi was permitted to board the flight to Qatar and she and her daughters have not returned to the United States,” the affidavit says. “Alvi had numerous pieces of luggage with her, including cardboard boxes… Your affiant does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.”
Soon after Imran began working for Wasserman Schultz in 2005, four of his relatives appeared on the payroll of other Democrats at inflated salaries, but Democratic staffers said they were rarely seen at work. They collected $4 million in taxpayer salaries since 2009.
House authorities told members in February that Imran and his relatives were suspects in a criminal investigation into theft and IT abuses, and they were banned from the Capitol network.
Wasserman Schultz has refused to fire Imran, despite his being a known criminal suspect in a cybersecurity probe for months, and has blocked Capitol Police from searching a laptop they confiscated because it was tied to him.
TheDCNF reported Sunday night that the FBI had joined the investigation and seized smashed hard drives from Imran’s home. The next day, the FBI apprehended him at Dulles Airport after noticing that he had purchased a ticket to Pakistan, via Qatar.
The affidavit says he was charged with bank fraud involving fraudulently taking out mortgages, which was one of several financial schemes TheDCNF has detailed. It appears to be a placeholder for future charges, spurred because of the attempt to leave the country, and does not mention his work for Congress, which is the investigation’s primary focus.
As TheDCNF has reported, the Awans own numerous rental properties that often have multiple mortgages taken out on them, and they have told renters they want payments in untraceable ways. The charging documents say Imran’s wife Hina Alvi, who also made $165,000 working for House Democrats, took out a second mortgage against a house from the Congressional Federal Credit Union by falsely claiming it was her “principal residence” and that she will “occupy” the property, and also fraudulently reported no rental income on her taxes.
A renter told the FBI “they paid approximately $2,000 per month for rent and that the rent check was written to Suriaya Begum. Based on information and belief, I know that Begum is Alvia’s mother,” an FBI agent wrote.
The agent also said Imran appears to have applied for the loan in his wife’s name.
Democratic members of Congress, including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, have suggested that police had framed the Pakistani-born brothers out of Islamophobia. Yet his own stepmother, a devout Muslim, filed court documents accusing him of using high-tech devices to wiretap her and extorting her (see p. 23 of court documents in that case). A dozen people who have dealt with Imran painted a picture in interviews with TheDCNF of a charming, “cunning” extrovert who bragged about his power among Democratic officials and who seemed to have an unquenchable thirst for cash.
The affidavit also paints him as an overly confident con artist, saying he listed his House phone number when initiating the wire transfer, and pretended to be a woman — his wife — on the phone when a Congressional Federal Credit Union questioned the transfer. “The person answering the call, who was a male, pretended that he was Alvi. On the call, the [bank] representative asked the man to verify the address of where the wire was being sent and the purpose of the outgoing wire,” the document says.
Imran claimed the $300,000 was for “funeral arrangements.”
“The CFCU representative then stated that ‘funeral arrangements’ may not be an acceptable reason for the wire. The male speaking to the representative then responded that he would look online for an acceptable reason for the wire. After a long pause, the male said that the reason for the wire was ‘buying property.’ The representative accepted that reason and initiated the wire transfer to Pakistan.”
Fox News was first to report the arrest. TheDCNF has done 20 stories on the brothers since February — linked below — including reporting that Imran’s wife had fled.
Bill Miller, spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, told TheDCNF that Awan “was arraigned today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on one count of bank fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344. He pled not guilty and was released pursuant to a high-intensity supervision program. The conditions of release are that he receive a GPS monitor, he abide by a curfew of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and that he not leave a 50-mile radius of his residence in Virginia. Awan was also ordered to turn over all of his passports.”
Wasserman Schultz’s spokesman, David Damron, did not immediately return a request for comment.
See if your member of Congress is on the chart below (see orig). The Awan brothers could read all emails sent and received by these members, as well as all files on their staffers’ computers.
National Review: There’s more than bank fraud going on here.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Pakistani IT Scammers
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
July 29, 2017 4:00 AM @ANDREWCMCCARTHY
There’s more than bank fraud going on here. In Washington, it’s never about what they tell you it’s about. So take this to the bank: The case of Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s mysterious Pakistani IT guy, is not about bank fraud.
Yet bank fraud was the stated charge on which Awan was arrested at Dulles Airport this week, just as he was trying to flee the United States for Pakistan, via Qatar. That is the same route taken by Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, in March, when she suddenly fled the country, with three young daughters she yanked out of school, mega-luggage, and $12,400 in cash.
By then, the proceeds of the fraudulent $165,000 loan they’d gotten from the Congressional Federal Credit Union had been sent ahead. It was part of a $283,000 transfer that Awan managed to wire from Capitol Hill. He pulled it off — hilariously, if infuriatingly — by pretending to be his wife in a phone call with the credit union. Told that his proffered reason for the transfer (“funeral arrangements”) wouldn’t fly, “Mrs.” Awan promptly repurposed: Now “she” was “buying property.” Asking no more questions, the credit union wired the money . . . to Pakistan.
As you let all that sink in, consider this: Awan and his family cabal of fraudsters had access for years to the e-mails and other electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. It turns out they were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks.
They were fired in February. All except Awan, that is. He continued in the employ of Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat, former DNC chairwoman, and Clinton crony. She kept him in place at the United States Congress right up until he was nabbed at the airport on Monday.
This is not about bank fraud. The Awan family swindles are plentiful, but they are just window-dressing. This appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.
At the time of his arrest, the 37-year-old Imran Awan had been working for Democrats as an information technologist for 13 years. He started out with Representative Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) in 2004. The next year, he landed on the staff of Wasserman Schultz, who had just been elected to the House.
Congressional-staff salaries are modest, in the $40,000 range. For some reason, Awan was paid about four times as much. He also managed to get his wife, Alvi, on the House payroll . . . then his brother, Abid Awan . . . then Abid’s wife, Natalia Sova. The youngest of the clan, Awan’s brother Jamal, came on board in 2014 — the then-20-year-old commanding an annual salary of $160,000.
A few of these arrangements appear to have been sinecures: While some Awans were rarely seen around the office, we now know they were engaged in extensive financial shenanigans away from the Capitol. Nevertheless, the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, who has been all over this story, reports that, for their IT “work,” the Pakistani family has reeled in $4 million from U.S. taxpayers since 2009.
That’s just the “legit” dough. The family business evidently dabbles in procurement fraud, too. The Capitol Police and FBI are exploring widespread double-billing for computers, other communication devices, and related equipment.
Why were they paid so much for doing so little? Intriguing as it is, that’s a side issue. A more pressing question is: Why were they given access to highly sensitive government information? Ordinarily, that requires a security clearance, awarded only after a background check that peruses ties to foreign countries, associations with unsavory characters, and vulnerability to blackmail.
These characters could not possibly have qualified. Never mind access; it’s hard to fathom how they retained their jobs. The Daily Caller has also discovered that the family, which controlled several properties, was involved in various suspicious mortgage transfers. Abid Awan, while working “full-time” in Congress, ran a curious auto-retail business called “Cars International A” (yes, CIA), through which he was accused of stealing money and merchandise. In 2012, he discharged debts in bankruptcy (while scheming to keep his real-estate holdings). Congressional Democrats hired Abid despite his drunk-driving conviction a month before he started at the House, and they retained him despite his public-drunkenness arrest a month after. Beyond that, he and Imran both committed sundry vehicular offenses. In civil lawsuits, they are accused of life-insurance fraud.
Democrats now say that any access to sensitive information was “unauthorized.” But how hard could it have been to get “unauthorized” access when House Intelligence Committee Dems wanted their staffers to have unbounded access? In 2016, they wrote a letter to an appropriations subcommittee seeking funding so their staffers could obtain “Top Secret — Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearances. TS/SCI is the highest-level security classification. Awan family members were working for a number of the letter’s signatories.
Democratic members, of course, would not make such a request without coordination with leadership. Did I mention that the ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee to whom the letter was addressed was Debbie Wasserman Schultz?
Why has the investigation taken so long? Why so little enforcement action until this week? Why, most of all, were Wasserman Schultz and her fellow Democrats so indulgent of the Awans?
The probe began in late 2016. In short order, the Awans clearly knew they were hot numbers. They started arranging the fraudulent credit-union loan in December, and the $283,000 wire transfer occurred on January 18. In early February, House security services informed representatives that the Awans were suspects in a criminal investigation. At some point, investigators found stolen equipment stashed in the Rayburn House Office Building, including a laptop that appears to belong to Wasserman Schultz and that Imran was using. Although the Awans were banned from the Capitol computer network, not only did Wasserman Schultz keep Imran on staff for several additional months, but Meeks retained Alvi until February 28 — five days before she skedaddled to Lahore.
Strange thing about that: On March 5, the FBI (along with the Capitol Police) got to Dulles Airport in time to stop Alvi before she embarked. It was discovered that she was carrying $12,400 in cash. As I pointed out this week, it is a felony to export more than $10,000 in currency from the U.S. without filing a currency transportation report. It seems certain that Alvi did not file one: In connection with her husband’s arrest this week, the FBI submitted to the court a complaint affidavit that describes Alvi’s flight but makes no mention of a currency transportation report. Yet far from making an arrest, agents permitted her to board the plane and leave the country, notwithstanding their stated belief that she has no intention of returning.
Many congressional staffers are convinced that they’d long ago have been in handcuffs if they pulled what the Awans are suspected of. Nevertheless, no arrests were made when the scandal became public in February. For months, Imran has been strolling around the Capitol. In the interim, Wasserman Schultz has been battling investigators: demanding the return of her laptop, invoking a constitutional privilege (under the speech-and-debate clause) to impede agents from searching it, and threatening the Capitol Police with “consequences” if they don’t relent. Only last week, according to Fox News, did she finally signal willingness to drop objections to a scan of the laptop by federal investigators. Her stridency in obstructing the investigation has been jarring.
As evidence has mounted, the scores of Democrats for whom the Awans worked have expressed no alarm. Instead, we’ve heard slanderous suspicions that the investigation is a product of — all together now — “Islamophobia.” But Samina Gilani, the Awan brothers’ stepmother, begs to differ. Gilani complained to Virginia police that the Awans secretly bugged her home and then used the recordings to blackmail her. She averred in court documents that she was pressured to surrender cash she had stored in Pakistan. Imran claimed to be “very powerful” — so powerful he could order her family members kidnapped.
We don’t know if these allegations are true, but they are disturbing. The Awans have had the opportunity to acquire communications and other information that could prove embarrassing, or worse, especially for the pols who hired them. Did the swindling staffers compromise members of Congress? Does blackmail explain why were they able to go unscathed for so long? And as for that sensitive information, did the Awans send American secrets, along with those hundreds of thousands of American dollars, to Pakistan?
This is no run-of-the-mill bank-fraud case.
NYT:
Trump Fuels Intrigue Surrounding a Former I.T. Worker’s Arrest
Trump Fuels Intrigue Surrounding a Former I.T. Worker’s Arrest
By NICHOLAS FANDOS
JULY 28, 2017
For months, conservative news outlets have built a case against Imran Awan, his wife, two brothers and a friend, piece by piece.
To hear some commentators tell it, with the help of his family and a cushy job on Capitol Hill, Mr. Awan, a Pakistani-American, had managed to steal computer hardware, congressional data and even — just maybe — a trove of internal Democratic National Committee emails that eventually surfaced last summer on WikiLeaks. It helped that the story seems to involve, if only tangentially, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman who is the former chairwoman of the committee and an ally of Hillary Clinton’s.
The Daily Caller, with almost two dozen articles on the family, has led the pack in reporting the story, packaging new details that have dribbled out of the investigation into a growing web of material, even as few in the mainstream news media paid attention.
That is until Monday, when Mr. Awan was arrested by the F.B.I. and United States Capitol Police on seemingly unrelated charges as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan. In the days since, the story has raced down an increasingly familiar track at warp speed, from the fringes of the internet to Fox News and other established publications.
By Thursday morning, President Trump gave an added boost to the intrigue, reposting a tweet from the conservative news site Townhall suggesting a cover-up by TV networks.
But for all the publicity, few if any of the fundamental facts of the case have come into focus. The criminal complaint against Mr. Awan filed on Monday alleges that he and his wife conspired to secure a fraudulent loan, not to commit espionage or political high jinks. And Mr. Awan’s lawyer, Christopher Gowen, says the more explosive accusations are the product of an anti-Muslim, right-wing smear job targeting his client and his client’s family.
So is the family’s story the stuff of a spy novel, ripe for sleuthing and criminal prosecution, or simply an overblown Washington story, typical of midsummer? Many here are finding it hard to say.
The tale more or less began six months ago, when investigators for the United States Capitol Police started looking into allegations by unnamed House lawmakers that the Pakistani-Americans had executed some sort of scam. What, exactly, has not been clear. News outlets have alluded variously to a procurement scheme, outright theft of computers or unauthorized access to computer networks — in addition to more extreme crimes like espionage.
The Capitol Police declined on Thursday to comment on the investigation, which they said was continuing. Mr. Gowen said his client was cooperating with investigators, but had not been interviewed in connection with the case.
Some basic facts appear to be clear. Mr. Awan had been employed by the House of Representatives as an I.T. specialist since 2004 and his wife, two brothers and a friend began similar work in subsequent years. Over the years, he contracted to work part time for more than a dozen Democratic members of Congress, including Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The work, Mr. Gowen and congressional staff members said, was mostly run of the mill: setting up new phones and computers, fixing printers, helping aides and members reset passwords.
After the authorities briefed lawmakers about the investigation this spring, the legislators began to cut ties one by one, citing concerns about appearances or an abundance of caution.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz held out, arguing that until there was credible evidence, she saw no reason to terminate a longstanding work arrangement. She ultimately did so this week, after getting news of Mr. Awan’s arrest.
“After details of the investigation were reviewed with us, my office was provided no evidence to indicate that laws had been broken, which over time, raised troubling concerns about due process, fair treatment and potential ethnic and religious profiling,” Ms. Wasserman Shultz said on Thursday through a spokesman.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz has been a favorite target of conspiracy theorists on both the left and the right since last July, when WikiLeaks began posting internal Democratic National Committee correspondence that showed party officials had conspired to harm the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Her connection to the I.T. staff members has only helped fuel conspiracy theories this time around.
George Webb, a prolific right-wing YouTube conspiracy theorist, suggested in February that the men were Pakistani spies given access to sensitive government information by Democrats who backed them. Since Mr. Awan’s arrest on Monday, the allegations have only grown more elaborate and pushed into the mainstream. Fox News’s Geraldo Rivera and Sean Hannity speculated on Tuesday that Mr. Awan was the source of Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.
“Here’s the corrupt I.T. guy standing at the shoulder of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, arrested at the airport trying to flee,” Mr. Rivera said. “He has all of the passcodes. He has the passwords. He has all of the information.”
“This is my theory: Maybe Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t want to be exposed,” Mr. Hannity, who dined with Mr. Trump at the White House on Wednesday evening, interjected, “because she knows she colluded against Bernie Sanders. She knows the primary was rigged.”
Mr. Gowen, the lawyer, said the allegation was baseless.
“He didn’t even have a security clearance,” Mr. Gowen said. “It is a completely utterly ridiculous statement.”
Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the Democratic committee, called the suggestion “laughable.”
“He was never employed by the D.N.C.,” she said. “The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia was behind the D.N.C. hack.”
The criminal complaint against Mr. Awan alleged that he and his wife, Hina Alvi, had conspired to defraud the Congressional Federal Credit Union by claiming on a $165,000 loan application in January that a property they owned was their primary residence when it was actually being rented out. The money was then included as part of a $283,000 wire transfer to Pakistan, according to the affidavit. Mr. Gowen said the transfer represented the latest payment by his client for a piece of property he was buying in the country, though the affidavit says that it was initially earmarked for “funeral arrangements.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Awan pleaded not guilty to the separate bank fraud charge in a Washington court and was released under high-intensity supervision. On Thursday, Mr. Gowen called the charge “extremely minor” and said his client would fight it.
What connection, if any, it has to the House investigation is unclear.
Mr. Awan was arrested on Monday as he tried to board a flight for Pakistan, where Ms. Alvi and the couple’s children have been staying since March. Mr. Gowen said he had informed the prosecutor in the original investigation of Mr. Awan’s intention to travel and thought he had clearance.
The authorities had also stopped Ms. Alvi when she left the country in March, and a search of her belongings showed boxes of household goods and more than $12,000 in a case, according to an affidavit. She was allowed to proceed.
Mr. Gowen said the family had traveled to Pakistan to stay with family. After speculation about the investigation started to appear online, he said, the family began receiving threats online and without work, they needed to save money.
Trump Fuels Intrigue Surrounding a Former I.T. Worker’s Arrest
By NICHOLAS FANDOS
JULY 28, 2017
For months, conservative news outlets have built a case against Imran Awan, his wife, two brothers and a friend, piece by piece.
To hear some commentators tell it, with the help of his family and a cushy job on Capitol Hill, Mr. Awan, a Pakistani-American, had managed to steal computer hardware, congressional data and even — just maybe — a trove of internal Democratic National Committee emails that eventually surfaced last summer on WikiLeaks. It helped that the story seems to involve, if only tangentially, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman who is the former chairwoman of the committee and an ally of Hillary Clinton’s.
The Daily Caller, with almost two dozen articles on the family, has led the pack in reporting the story, packaging new details that have dribbled out of the investigation into a growing web of material, even as few in the mainstream news media paid attention.
That is until Monday, when Mr. Awan was arrested by the F.B.I. and United States Capitol Police on seemingly unrelated charges as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan. In the days since, the story has raced down an increasingly familiar track at warp speed, from the fringes of the internet to Fox News and other established publications.
By Thursday morning, President Trump gave an added boost to the intrigue, reposting a tweet from the conservative news site Townhall suggesting a cover-up by TV networks.
But for all the publicity, few if any of the fundamental facts of the case have come into focus. The criminal complaint against Mr. Awan filed on Monday alleges that he and his wife conspired to secure a fraudulent loan, not to commit espionage or political high jinks. And Mr. Awan’s lawyer, Christopher Gowen, says the more explosive accusations are the product of an anti-Muslim, right-wing smear job targeting his client and his client’s family.
So is the family’s story the stuff of a spy novel, ripe for sleuthing and criminal prosecution, or simply an overblown Washington story, typical of midsummer? Many here are finding it hard to say.
The tale more or less began six months ago, when investigators for the United States Capitol Police started looking into allegations by unnamed House lawmakers that the Pakistani-Americans had executed some sort of scam. What, exactly, has not been clear. News outlets have alluded variously to a procurement scheme, outright theft of computers or unauthorized access to computer networks — in addition to more extreme crimes like espionage.
The Capitol Police declined on Thursday to comment on the investigation, which they said was continuing. Mr. Gowen said his client was cooperating with investigators, but had not been interviewed in connection with the case.
Some basic facts appear to be clear. Mr. Awan had been employed by the House of Representatives as an I.T. specialist since 2004 and his wife, two brothers and a friend began similar work in subsequent years. Over the years, he contracted to work part time for more than a dozen Democratic members of Congress, including Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The work, Mr. Gowen and congressional staff members said, was mostly run of the mill: setting up new phones and computers, fixing printers, helping aides and members reset passwords.
After the authorities briefed lawmakers about the investigation this spring, the legislators began to cut ties one by one, citing concerns about appearances or an abundance of caution.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz held out, arguing that until there was credible evidence, she saw no reason to terminate a longstanding work arrangement. She ultimately did so this week, after getting news of Mr. Awan’s arrest.
“After details of the investigation were reviewed with us, my office was provided no evidence to indicate that laws had been broken, which over time, raised troubling concerns about due process, fair treatment and potential ethnic and religious profiling,” Ms. Wasserman Shultz said on Thursday through a spokesman.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz has been a favorite target of conspiracy theorists on both the left and the right since last July, when WikiLeaks began posting internal Democratic National Committee correspondence that showed party officials had conspired to harm the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Her connection to the I.T. staff members has only helped fuel conspiracy theories this time around.
George Webb, a prolific right-wing YouTube conspiracy theorist, suggested in February that the men were Pakistani spies given access to sensitive government information by Democrats who backed them. Since Mr. Awan’s arrest on Monday, the allegations have only grown more elaborate and pushed into the mainstream. Fox News’s Geraldo Rivera and Sean Hannity speculated on Tuesday that Mr. Awan was the source of Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.
“Here’s the corrupt I.T. guy standing at the shoulder of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, arrested at the airport trying to flee,” Mr. Rivera said. “He has all of the passcodes. He has the passwords. He has all of the information.”
“This is my theory: Maybe Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t want to be exposed,” Mr. Hannity, who dined with Mr. Trump at the White House on Wednesday evening, interjected, “because she knows she colluded against Bernie Sanders. She knows the primary was rigged.”
Mr. Gowen, the lawyer, said the allegation was baseless.
“He didn’t even have a security clearance,” Mr. Gowen said. “It is a completely utterly ridiculous statement.”
Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the Democratic committee, called the suggestion “laughable.”
“He was never employed by the D.N.C.,” she said. “The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia was behind the D.N.C. hack.”
The criminal complaint against Mr. Awan alleged that he and his wife, Hina Alvi, had conspired to defraud the Congressional Federal Credit Union by claiming on a $165,000 loan application in January that a property they owned was their primary residence when it was actually being rented out. The money was then included as part of a $283,000 wire transfer to Pakistan, according to the affidavit. Mr. Gowen said the transfer represented the latest payment by his client for a piece of property he was buying in the country, though the affidavit says that it was initially earmarked for “funeral arrangements.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Awan pleaded not guilty to the separate bank fraud charge in a Washington court and was released under high-intensity supervision. On Thursday, Mr. Gowen called the charge “extremely minor” and said his client would fight it.
What connection, if any, it has to the House investigation is unclear.
Mr. Awan was arrested on Monday as he tried to board a flight for Pakistan, where Ms. Alvi and the couple’s children have been staying since March. Mr. Gowen said he had informed the prosecutor in the original investigation of Mr. Awan’s intention to travel and thought he had clearance.
The authorities had also stopped Ms. Alvi when she left the country in March, and a search of her belongings showed boxes of household goods and more than $12,000 in a case, according to an affidavit. She was allowed to proceed.
Mr. Gowen said the family had traveled to Pakistan to stay with family. After speculation about the investigation started to appear online, he said, the family began receiving threats online and without work, they needed to save money.
