DEMOCRATS PAY OFF INTRUSIVE IT MAN IMRAN AWAN:
“Congress Pays $850,000 to Muslim Aides Targeted in Inquiry Stoked by Trump,” reads the November 25 New York Times headline. According to the story, the previously unreported settlement is one of the largest to resolve discrimination or harassment claims, in this case by people who “lost their jobs and endured harassment in part because of their Muslim faith and South Asian origins.”
Reporters Noam Scheiber and Nicholas Fandos give no date for settlement and do not explain why it was “previously unreported.” Congress reportedly made the payment but the only House member quoted is Florida Democrat Ted Deutch, a leading figure in Democrats’ charge that candidate Donald Trump was guilty of collusion with Russia and a vocal proponent of impeaching President Trump.
“It is tragic and outrageous the way right-wing media and Republicans all the way up to President Trump attempted to destroy the lives of an immigrant Muslim-American family based on scurrilous allegations,” Deutch told Sheiber and Fandos. As they explain, the settlement was also “an attempt to bring a close to a convoluted saga that led to one of the most durable — and misleading — story lines of the Trump era.”
What started as “a relatively ordinary House inquiry into procurement irregularities by Imran Awan, three members of his family and a friend, who had a bustling practice providing members of Congress with technology support, was twisted into lurid accusations of hacking government information.” That side of the story could use more detail.
Of all the IT people in all the IT firms in all the world, House Democrats thought Imran Awan was best man for the job. Sometimes working from his native Pakistan, Awan and his family team accessed the computers of some 40 Democrats, including those on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees. Without their consent Awan and his team stashed the Democrats’ data on a server controlled by Xavier Becerra, chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
And speak of the devil: Biden Picks California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for HHS.