Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's (D-FL) IT aide Imran Awan was busted in February for double billing, as well as allegedly damaging equipment, and exposing sensitive congressional information.
He was arrested trying to leave the country in July, after which Wasserman Schultz finally fired him.
Now, a month later, a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. has indicted Awan on four charges. Those counts include bank fraud and making false statements.
The indictment itself, which merely represents formal charges and is not a finding of guilt, addresses separate allegations that Awan and his wife engaged in a conspiracy to obtain home equity lines of credit from the Congressional Federal Credit Union by giving false information about two properties – and then sending the proceeds to individuals in Pakistan.
So, what was Wasserman Schultz thinking keeping Awan on her payroll - especially after nearly every other lawmaker he was working for had fired him? She claims she thought Awan had been the victim of religious profiling. His investigators, she suggested, were Islamophobic.
Wasserman Schultz also blamed the “right-wing media circus fringe” for obsessing over Awan, accusing them of only doing so to distract from the investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. (She forgot to mention how the Big Three basically ignored Awan.)
By the way, there's a big difference between her aide's actions and the Russian collusion story. The former is an actual crime, while the latter is a rumor with so far zero evidence to corroborate it.
Hopefully Wasserman Schultz is letting someone else do the hiring from now on.
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