Posted on 11/30/2017 2:09:56 AM PST by markomalley
A court date for a former Democratic IT aide has been postponed by more than a month after the defendant’s attorney, a former Hillary Clinton aide, said he’s seeking to block prosecutors from using evidence that appears to include a government laptop tied to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“The government has been in discussions with counsel for the defendants regarding complex discovery issues and other legal issues in this case, in particular issues surrounding claims of attorney-client privilege being raised by defendant Imran Awan,” court papers filed Tuesday say.
“Last night, counsel for both defendants indicated that they need additional time to review and analyze these issues, along with the voluminous discovery the government provided in this case,” according to the documents. “The government consents to this request.”
Chris Gowen, Awan’s attorney, said at the last hearing: “We do expect there being an attorney-client privilege issue in this case… What occurred is a backpack from my client was found, he was trying to get a better signal, there was a note that said attorney client privilege and a hard drive. We feel very strongly about this.”
A Capitol Police report shows that the backpack contained the following items:
#1 a Pakistani ID card with the name Mohommed Ashraf Awan
#2 a copy – not original – of a driver’s license with name Imran Awan
#3 a copy (front and back) of his congressional ID
#4 an Apple laptop with the homescreen initials ‘RepDWS’
#5 composition notebooks with notes handwritten saying ‘attorney client privilege’ and possibly discussing case details below
#6 loose letters addressed to US Attorney of DC discussing the apparent owner of the bag being investigated.
It is unclear how the handwritten note saying “attorney client privilege” could be construed to cover a hard drive, rather than the pages of notebook it was contained on.
Imran Awan, his wife, his two brothers Abid and Jamal, and a friend all worked as IT aides for dozens of Democratic members of Congress. Shortly after WikiLeaks published the Democratic National Committee’s emails and during the lead up to the 2016 election, investigators discovered indications that they were using a server “for nefarious purposes” and “could be reading and/or removing information,” according to a briefing.
They were banned from the House network in February 2017, but Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, refused to fire Awan. Late one night in March, he left the backpack in a phone booth in a different House building than the one she occupies.
Wasserman Schultz fought to prevent law enforcement from looking at the laptop, threatening a police chief with “consequences” and implying it was “a member’s” laptop. She hired an outside lawyer, Bill Pittard, who specializes in the “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution that is designed to protect lawmakers from persecution for political stances, but lawmakers have used to try to stymie criminal probes in the past.
Now, it is Awans’ lawyers who are seeking the right to keep information in the backpack, including the “hard drive,” from being used as evidence.
Andrew McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who has followed the case, said “The A/C (attorney-client) privilege only applies to communications between the client and lawyer that are for the purpose of seeking legal advice and that are intended by both parties to be kept confidential… Moreover, asserting that something is A/C protected does not make it so. You still have to show that the material in question constitutes communications strictly between the lawyer and client that were for the purpose of seeking legal advice.”
“If I give my lawyer my bank records and ask him if they show evidence of a crime, the bank records do not become A/C-privileged — only his advice to me would be A/C-privileged. And if I stuck a sign on my bank records that said ‘A/C-privileged documents,’ that would not make them A/C-privileged documents,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday.
The notation indicates that Awan hired a lawyer long before March, because he knew he was the subject of a criminal investigation into his House activities. He was not charged with bank fraud until July, when he was arrested at the airport by the FBI. He was attempting to leave the country and prosecutors said a document he was carrying indicated he was using an alias.
The “voluminous discovery,” and the apparent importance of the hard drive to the case, also suggests the aides’ work in the House is at issue, not simply a matter of lying on requests for bank withdrawals. Democrats such as Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas — a member of the intelligence committee — and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, however, have claimed the case has nothing to do with their work on Capitol Hill.
The men employed Abid and Jamal. “The brother you mentioned that got arrested, he was not my staffer, I used someone else who was part of the same company,” Lieu told a TV station. “If you look at the charge of the brother, he was charged with bank fraud… that has nothing to do with national security.”
Neither of the lawmakers explained why, if the only issue is alleged bank fraud by Imran, they would have fired all his relatives five months earlier.
The briefing warned that “all five of the shared employees system administrators collectively logged onto the [House Democratic] Caucus system 5,735 times, or an average of 27 times per day,” even though only one of them was authorized.
The hearing, set for Thursday, was postponed to Jan. 8. It was originally scheduled for just before Thanksgiving, but was postponed by a week after a similar request.
Exactly.
Nothing innocent about the Bushes and the Clintons, and the intelligence agencies were corrupted almost as soon as they were started—it has just been getting worse and worse.
Article and comments.
Questions:
A Congressman's written request to House admin to sign away that much "lost" electronic equipment would have been “way outside any realm of normalcy,” particularly since Clarke's small office employed only 16 aides. The $120,000 tax dollars would have bought about 150 devices.
Clarke's office failed to alert authorities until months later when House administrators told Clarke's office they were reviewing finances connected to the Awans.
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Here's the sap-happy Dem blithely "aiding and abetting" the theft of US-govt issue equipment.
"Oh, it's just a measly 120,000 tax dollars.....just write it off."
Cong Yvette Clarke describes herself as a "Caribbean-American."
Yoo hoo, Yvette, your orange jumpsuit is ready.
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EXCERPT: The missing govt-issue equipment tied to NY Cong Yvette Clarke’s office supposedly included many iPhones and iPads, an official told TheDCNF.
At $800 each, Cong Clarke's $120,000 write-off would pay for 150 electronic items. Yet, Cong Clarke's office, according to payroll records, has only 16 employees......why did Clarke need so many electronics for that small staff?
Cong Clarke's request for the $120,000 write-off came around the time of that staffing change. but she (A) refused to tell a reporter which person signed the form, and (B) why they did not fire Abid Awan at that time, or (C) why they did not alert authorities (not reporting knowledge of a crime IS a crime).
The Daily Caller reported that Cong Yvette Clarke’s chief routinely called a House help desk to inquire about the write-off process but did not ever convey the highly unusual scale of the dollar figure, the official said.
NOTE: The missing $120,000 covers only Cong Yvette Clarke’s office. Democrats employing the Pakis have not been audited for similar patterns.......as yet.
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TALKING POINTS demand Cong Clarke be placed under House arrest at once.
Nauseating........and their Democrat employers defend them
We have a Congress of stupid fools.
As a Democrat employee, Imran found plenty of time (and had mucho tax dollars) to pursue his private money-making interests:
<><> he owned 12-or so houses....
<><> he rented out some of these homes....
<><> he ran a car dealership....
<><> he ran an export company to Pakistan
<><> he had a computer systems sales company (selling stolen govt gear?)
<><> and a Blackberry cell phone “repair” operation.
Imran's thirst for money was unquenchable. He falsified apps to get several home loans from the Congressional Credit Union. He got the credit union to wire-transfer monies abroad.
QUESTION: Did Debbie DEMento have to sign off on her employee's mega-dollar transactions at the Congressional Credit Union? Particularly Imran's shady wire-transfer of some 300,00 tax dollars to Pakistan?
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ADDENDUM--After Imran got arrested, Cong Wasserman Schultz's spox said that "Debbie's team had been given no evidence to suggest Awan had broken a law"......"she was under the impression he had been the victim of religious profiling."
(waiting for hysterical laughter to die down)
These deluded Dementocrats actually think we are supposed to believe this claptrap.....(like John Conyers is celibate).
I guess mayo-head Debbie was waiting for lightning to strike her. Brain-dead Debbie, the deluded Dementocrat, keeps on proving her utter unsuitability for public office.
This case will linger for about 2 years and then disappear. Why these Defendants are on the street is very curious. DWS was pulling all the strings. Now the Clintons have taken over.
Drudge? Who in their right mind looking for news about government corruption and various Democrat criminality ever goes there anymore?
The mental image of a pork chop tied around her neck just popped into my head.
NOTE Clarke did not alert authorities to the huge amt of missing tech equipment that she had "written-off" to the tune of $120,000 tax dollars around Feb 2016.....
......or......
that the $120,000 worth of equipment she ordered for her office had been delivered to Imran Awan's home.
.....or.......
that purchase agreements had been falsified
Its a classic theft scheme.....being conducted out of the House Democrat Caucus.
THE MO---Awan reports a theft then sells the equipment out the back door.
The Congressman gets a nice cut b/c their office budgets have a slush fund for pricey tech equipment.....written years ago when tech was very expensive. They pocket the difference.
After the alleged Russian hacking incident, the DNC hired CrowdStrike to perform a security analysis of their servers and lo!, CrowdStrike discovered evidence of Russian hacking. Yet somehow CrowdStrike failed to discover that the Awans had all kinds of unauthorized access to the very same DNC servers. Funny how CrowdStrike could uncover evidence of elite Russian cyber-espionage, yet didn't notice a bunch of amateurs messing around where they shouldn't be.
This is a major fail of the smell test, and points to other, far more sinister interpretations of both the Awans activities and the alleged Russian hacking.
back in the USA
BUMP!!
Thanks markomalley. [singing] Four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Calling George Webb,calling George Webb.....
Webb is all over this stuff and has the answers to any question any judge or jury could possibly raise.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQ-wHKVi0JDWjQGcuoYnew
Go here and review the past 400 or 500 videos that George webb has produced and you will know everything you want to know about the Imran bros., Seth Rich,Hillary,Podesta,where the uranium comes from where it goes, how Russian uranium is marked how ours is marked,on and on you name it he’s on it.
Great catch Liz,only one of dozens of of-paws that have gotten past the hard lefties.
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