A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.”
In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”
The memo, addressed to the Committee on House Administration (CHA) and dated Feb. 3, 2017, was recently reviewed and transcribed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The letter bolsters TheDCNF’s previous reporting about the missingserver and evidence of fraudon Capitol Hill.
It details how the caucus server, run by then-caucus Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra, was secretly copied by authorities after the House Inspector General (IG) identified suspicious activity on it, but the Awans’ physical access was not blocked.
But after, the report reads, the server appears to have been secretly replaced with one that looked similar.
The memo called for firing the Pakistani-born aides, revoking all their computer accounts, and changing the locks on any door they had access to.
Rep. Louie Gohmert — a Texas Republican on the House Committee on the Judiciary who has done oversight work on the case — said the missing server contained copies of Congress members’ emails.
“They put 40 members of Congress’s data on one server … That server, with that serial number, has disappeared,” he said.
Multiple sources connected to the investigation told TheDCNF that shortly after an IG report came out identifying the House Democratic Caucus server as key evidence in a criminal probe, the evidence was stolen.
“They [the Awans] deliberately turned over a fake server” to falsify evidence, one official close to the CHA alleged. “It was a breach. The data was completely out of [members’] possession.”
The six-page letter says:
• In September of 2016 … the CHA and [IG] briefed the former Chairman of the Democratic Caucus about suspicious activity related to their server that the [IG] identified. As a result, the former Chairman of the Democratic Caucus directed the CAO to copy the data from their server and two computers.
• The CHA directed the IG to refer the matter to the US Capitol Police. The USCP initiated an investigation that continues to this day.
• In late 2016, the former Chairman of the Democratic Caucus announced his intention to resign from Congress to assume a new position. The CAO and [sergeant-at-arms] worked with the Chairman to account for his inventory, including the one server.
• While reviewing the inventory, the CAO discovered that the serial number of the server did not match that of the one imaged in September. [Investigators] also discovered that the server in question [the replacement server] was still operating under the employee’s control, contrary to the explicit instructions of the former chairman to turn over all equipment and fully cooperate with the inquiry and investigation. [A House source said the “employee” was Abid Awan.]
• The USCP interviewed relevant staff regarding the missing server.
• On January 24, 2017, the CAO acquired the [replacement] server from the control of the employees and transferred that server to the USCP.
President Donald Trump referenced the Democratic Caucus’ missing server in a tweet. But because the letter to the CHA was kept secret, many news outlets have not grasped that the House’s top cop documented a “missing server” connected to the Democratic Caucus.
The timeline laid out in the letter also shows that Becerra — now California’s Democratic attorney general — failed to ensure that the Awans didn’t have access to House computer systems during the 2016 election, which was wrought with cybersecurity scandals.
“The Caucus Chief of Staff requested one of the shared employees to not provide IT services or access their computers,” it read. “This shared employee continued.” It’s unclear why that request was not granted or why it was a request rather than an order.
A House official close to the probe said the employee was Abid, who was not on Becerra or the Caucus’s payroll. The official said Becerra Chief of Staff Sean McCluskie apparently knew Abid was accessing Caucus servers. According to payroll records, Abid’s sister-in-law, Hina Alvi, was the Caucus’ systems administrator.
Becerra has refused to comment, citing an ongoing criminal investigation.
The February 2017 memo itemizes “numerous and egregious violations of House IT security” by members of the Awan family, including using Congress members’ usernames and “the unauthorized storage of sensitive House information outside the House.”
“These employees accessed user accounts and computers for offices that did not employ them, without the knowledge and permission of the impacted Member’s office,” it said, adding, “4 of the employees accessed the Democratic Caucus computers 5,735 times.” More than 100 office computers were open to access from people not on the office’s staff, it said.
Chris Gowen — a former aide to Hillary Clinton who is now serving as Imran’s attorney — told TheDCNF, “There is no missing server and never was.”
He didn’t provide any support for his claim, which is contrary to evidence Kiko and Irving presented to Congress.
The memo said the CHA possesses voluminous evidence, including, “Interview notes with House Members’ Chiefs of Staff,” and “Logon activity and computer access logs.” Prosecutors have not brought charges.
The Awans were banned from Congress’s computer network the day the letter was sent, and Kiko held a briefing to convey the message to chiefs of staff for members who employed them.
But Democrats claim they were never told about any of the cybersecurity issues itemized in the urgent memo. Rep. Jackie Speier — a California Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who employed Imran and his wife, Hina Alvi — said she never heard of any missing server.
Joaquin Castro of Texas — another Democratic intelligence committee member who employed one of the Awans — told TheDCNF that Kiko never told him of any cybersecurity issues whatsoever and that the Awan probe was instead described as a theft issue.
Indeed, the CHA issued only one public statement on the case and titled it the “House Theft Investigation” — wording that avoids cybersecurity words while political news coverage raged about other cybersecurity issues in the 2016 election.
Yet even the alleged theft has not resulted in criminal charges — even though the letter also says House authorities have “purchase orders and vouchers” that allegedly show procurement fraud, as well as testimony from a Democratic chief of staff to Rep. Yvette Clarke, who warned of procurement fraud.
The FBI arrested Imran at the airport in July 2017 for alleged bank fraud that occurred six months prior, and Democrats have since claimed that the case is about nothing but bank fraud. Bank fraud does not explain why the Awans were kicked off the House network concurrent with the urgent memo, which did not cite bank fraud.
A Democratic IT aide who alleged that Imran solicited a bribe from him told TheDCNF he believes members of Congress are playing dumb and covering the matter up. Wendy Anderson, a former chief of staff to New York Rep. Yvette Clarke, told House investigators that she suspected that her predecessor, Shelley Davis, was working with Abid on a theft scheme, but Clarke refused to fire Abid until outside investigators got involved, TheDCNF reported.
Eighteen months after the evidence was recounted in the urgent memo, prosecution appears to have stalled for reasons not publicly explained. Imran is in court July 3 for a possible plea deal in the bank fraud case. Gohmert said the FBI has refused to accept evidence demonstrating alleged House misconduct, and some witnesses with first-hand knowledge say the bureau has not interviewed them.
Imran Awan: A Continuing DCNF Investigative Group Series
The Awans and their associates collected more than $5 million in pay from congressional offices, often drawing chief-of-staff level pay though there is reason to believe many didn’t even show up. The House’s internal probe found they logged into servers they had no affiliation with, used members’ usernames, covered their tracks, and persisted even after being fired.
The money is broken down by year, congressional office and family member paid:
Imran, Abid and Jamal Awan and Hina Alvi, Natalia Sova, Rao Abbas, Hasseb Rana, and Muhammad Awan.
President Donald Trump claims the Obama administration offered U.S. citizenship to thousands of Iranians, including the families of certain government employees, during the negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal.
“Just out that the Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians – including to government officials,” he tweeted Tuesday, adding, “How big (and bad) is that?”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Just out that the Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians – including to government officials. How big (and bad) is that?
The president, who announced U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran deal) in May, appears to be referencing a Fox News story citing a recent report from Iran’s semi-official Far News agency.
Obama Loves To Kiss Iran Ass More Than Anything
“When Obama, during the negotiations about the JCPOA, decided to do a favor to these men, he granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians and some officials started a competition over whose children could be part of these 2,500 Iranians,” Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zolnour, the conservative head of the Iranian parliament’s nuclear committee and a member of the national security and foreign policy committees, revealed recently, according to Far News. He explained that the Obama administration sought to curry favor with senior Iranian officials aligned with President Hassan Rouhani.
“If today these Iranians get deported from America, it will become clear who is complicit and sells the national interest like he is selling candies to America,” Zolnour, who is close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, further arguing that “It should be stated exactly which children of which authorities live in the United States and have received citizenship or residency.”
Fox noted that is unclear whether the Iranian politician meant citizenship or legal permanent resident (green card) status.
In 2015, the year the Iran nuclear deal was signed, the U.S. awarded green cards to 13,114 Iranians, and another 13,298 received green cards the following year, according to Department of Homeland Security data. Another 10,344 Iranians were naturalized in 2015, while 9,507 were granted citizenship in 2016.
If true, this would represent another concession by the Obama administration during negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal.
There are also longstanding concerns about the $1.7 billion payment to Iran that was portrayed by the administration as a legal settlement but coincided with the release of American prisoners, leading many observers to call it a ransom.
The Iranian politician’s comments are questionable, though. Fox News analyst and former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said his comments sound like “totally made up BS.”
The inspector general’s report on the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state has already documented just how riddled the bureau was with bias against Donald Trump when he was the Republican candidate for president.
Now, one conservative commentator is suggesting the report holds proof that the corruption went all the way to the top of the Justice Department.
In a Twitter post last week, Paul Sperry, who has written extensively about the FBI in columns published by the New York Post, hinted that Inspector General Michael Horowitz could have solid grounds to show “obstruction” in the Clinton email case – by none other than former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Sperry wrote that Horowitz testified on Capitol Hill about parts of his report that remain classified, and Sperry had a guess as to some of what it contained.
BREAKING: IG Horowitz testifies material implicating Lynch in possible obstruction of Hillary email case is contained in classified section of his report and that he will work with Congress to declassify it. Here is the possible smoking gun:
“BREAKING: IG Horowitz testifies material implicating Lynch in possible obstruction of Hillary email case is contained in classified section of his report and that he will work with Congress to declassify it,” Sperry wrote. “Here is the smoking gun …”
Sperry linked to one of his own columns in the Post from July 2017 that described a document indicating that Lynch had assured Clinton’s presidential campaign that she would make sure the FBI did not “go too far” in its investigation of the email case.
From even public information about the case, it’s pretty clear that Lynch kept a tight rein on it.
Did Loretta Lynch rein in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton investigation?
Former FBI Director James Comey has publicly testified that Lynch wanted him to refer to the Clinton probe as a “matter” rather than an “investigation.” (Comey pretended he was “confused” and “concerned” by the semantic choice. Can a man who made it to the top of the FBI be that obtuse? The answer is “no.”)
But if the IG report really does contain proof that Lynch put a limit on the FBI’s investigation to benefit the woman most of the political world expected to be elected president of the United States in November 2016, it puts things in a different light.
Lynch’s now infamous meeting with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Arizona on June 27, 2016, has never been adequately explained. The then-attorney general’s story that the two had crossed paths by accident never passed the laugh test.
On Sunday, The Washington Times reported that Clinton himself told investigators he only went to see Lynch on her Justice Department airplane because he did not want to be rude when he found out the two were parked at the same facility.
That doesn’t seem likely, to put it mildly.
What seems very possible, though, is that Lynch was keenly interested in keeping her job as the attorney general. And that Bill Clinton was interested in sounding her out about how much control she was exercising over the investigation into Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton might have been in a position to guarantee Lynch would stay on as attorney general if Hillary won the election — or remind Lynch of a guarantee already made.
Does the still-classified section of the IG report hold proof that Lynch was willing to keep the FBI from going “too far” in investigating Hillary?
Democrats and the liberal media have been claiming – ludicrously – that Horowitz’s damning report actually cleared the FBI. It actually exposed the agency as filled with bias, staffed by agents who thought nothing of using the bureau’s awesome powers to try to rig a presidential election.
That was bad enough. But the biggest shoe might still be waiting to drop.
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House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte on Friday subpoenaed former FBI Agent Peter Strzok to appear for a deposition next week.
Goodlatte issued the subpoena even though Strzok’s attorney said that Strzok is willing to testify voluntarily before Congress.
“We regret that the Committee felt it necessary to issue a subpoena when we repeatedly informed them that Pete was willing to testify voluntarily,” Strzok lawyer Aitan Goelman said in a statement after Goodlatte issued the subpoena.
A statement on the Judiciary Committee’s website said that the panel has “repeatedly requested to interview Mr. Strzok regarding his role in certain decisions, but he has yet to appear.”
As the FBI’s deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok oversaw the bureau’s investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to the Russian government. He was also a top investigator on the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton email probe. (RELATED: Strzok: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump Presidency)
While working on the Trump-Russia matter, Strzok sent numerous text messages criticizing the then-presidential candidate. In one Aug. 8, 2016 text message, Strzok told FBI attorney Lisa Page that “we’ll stop” Trump’s presidency.
A Department of Justice inspector general’s report released June 14 blasted Strzok over the text messages, saying that the messages indicated a “biased state of mind” and implied “a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”
Strzok was escorted from FBI headquarters June 15. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday that Strzok no longer has his security clearance. (RELATED: Strzok Loses Security Clearance)
Goelman said that his client “intends to answer any question put to him, and he intends to defend the integrity of the Clinton email investigation, the Russia collusion investigation to the extent that that’s a topic, and his own integrity,” in a letter sent to Goodlatte on Saturday.
Goelman said that Strzok “wants the chance to clear his name and tell his story.”
Everyone Associated With Hillary Clinton Is A Liar.
The Justice Department inspector general report released Friday revealed more personal messages between FBI agents working on the Clinton email probe that suggest a cooked outcome.
The report released new messages from an FBI agent who was one of four case officers handling the “day-to-day” activities of the investigation, and one of two FBI agents who interviewed Clinton.
In one exchange in February 2016, the FBI agent, identified only as “Agent 1,” talked to another FBI employee about interviewing Hillary Clinton’s personal IT staffer. The FBI employee asked how the interview went.
Agent 1 replied: “Awesome. Lied his ass off.”
He continued: “Went from never inside the scif [sensitive compartmented information facility] at [Clinton’s residence], to looked in when it was being constructed, to remove the trash twice, to troubleshot the secure fax with HRC a couple times, to everytime there was a secure fax i did it with HRC. Ridic,”
Lying to investigators is a federal crime, one that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is being charged with, as well as former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. However, the FBI employee joked it “would be funny” if the guy was charged.
The FBI employee replied: “would be funny if he was the only guy charged n this deal.”
Agent 1 responded that even though he lied, “aint noone gonna do s–t.”
He wrote: “I know. For 1001. Even if he said the truth and didnt have a clearance when handling the secure fax — aint noone gonna do s–t”
The report revealed other exchanges that revealed Agent 1’s belief that the outcome of the probe was cooked, in text messages he sent to a fellow FBI agent on the case with whom he was also involved in a relationship.
He advocated against even interviewing Clinton. “We have nothing—shouldn’t even be interviewing”
He also messaged: “My god … I’m actually starting to have embarrassment sprinkled on my disappointment. … Ever been forced to do something you adamantly opposed.”
In a later message, he wrote: “done interviewing the president” in reference to Clinton.
Agent 5 sent a message to him on February 9, 2016, complaining about the investigative work she was being given. He wrote her back:
“Yeah, I hear you. You guys have a shitty task, in a shitty environment. To look for something conjured in a place where you cant find it, for a case that doesnt matter and is predestined.”
On election day, he sent her, “You should know; … that I’m … with her.”
He also called the investigation “the most meaningless thing I’ve ever done,” a “continued waste of resources and time and focus.”
“Its just so obvious how pointless this exercise is …” he wrote.
He later told inspector general investigators that he was “embarrassed” his messages were read and denied it affected his actions in the investigation.
“You know, guys, I just, I think this was primarily used as a personal conversation venting mode for me. I’m embarrassed for it,” he said.
If 1 Of These Bastards Is Your Leader You Will Be Corrupt.
A bombshell inspector general report released Thursday revealed that several FBI employees improperly received gifts from reporters, in connection with possible leaks of sensitive information.
Although public details of these exchanges are scant, they could constitute prosecutable violations of federal gift-giving rules.
The gifts in question included “tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”
A Monkey Could See This Corruption.
“We will separately report on those investigations as they are concluded, consistent with the Inspector General Act, other applicable federal statutes, and OIG policy,” the report reads.
Gifting rules for executive branch officials are strict and exacting. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics provides that “executive branch employees may not solicit or accept gifts that are given because of their official positions or that come from certain interested sources (‘prohibited sources’).”
The rules define a prohibited source as a person who:
Is seeking official action by, is doing business or seeking to do business with, or is regulated by the employee’s agency; or
Has interests that may be substantially affected by performance or nonperformance of the employee’s official duties.
These rules apply to government officials, and it is not clear if any reporters involved in these dealings could face any sort of punishment.
It’s also not clear a reporter should be considered a “prohibited source” within the meaning of the provided definitions.
Violations of gift-giving rules are sometimes prosecuted as violations of the honest services fraud (HSF) statute. High profile office-holders indicted for gift violations under this law include Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and former GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia. Jack Abramoff, the notorious Washington lobbyist, was convicted of honest services fraud.
The HSF statute is a controversial tool, as its vague provisions permit an enterprising prosecutor to make a criminal case out of good faith mistakes or generally harmless conduct. The U.S. Supreme Court dramatically narrowed the reach of the law in a 2010 case called Skilling v. U.S., confining its use to cases involving bribes or kickbacks.
Violations of federal anti-corruption laws occur when a public employee takes “official action” in exchange for gifts. The high court has confined the meaning of “official action” to include only formal exercises of power in official proceedings. It’s not clear that leaking to a reporter falls within this definition, although other federal laws may criminalize this conduct.
Criminal cases notwithstanding, unauthorized media contacts involving the exchange of gifts could serve as a basis for other administrative penalties, like reassignment, suspension or termination.
