OPINION:
It’s hard at this point to know which is the worse affront to the American people — the fact that a Pakistani-born man, Imran Awan, with substantial access to congressional computer files was just arrested at the airport, while trying to flee the months-long gaze of the FBI’s eyes, or that Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t fire the guy until this week.
My vote? The latter. A saboteur is bad. But a Democratic Party leader sheltering a saboteur would be worse — far worse.
Who knows what coverups, what national security risks, have gone forth?
“I think this could be an enormous act of treason with a lot of people complicit,” said radio host and former Red Sox great Curt Schilling, during discussion of the arrest of Awan, former information technology consultant for Wasserman Schultz, and for several Democratic members of Congress.
Awan, who’s been reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation as under FBI investigation since at least February for various financial scandals tied to his position in Congress, was arrested this week at Dulles airport, trying to flee to Pakistan via Qatar, just hours after he made a questionable transfer of roughly $300,000 to an overseas bank account he could access.
And that arrest came after the FBI seized a couple of smashed computer hard drives from his home.
And that came after Awan, who served with his two brothers in part-time capacities in the House for eight years, reportedly collected about $4 million in taxpayer salaries for their services — a heck of a draw for positions that weren’t even full-time.
Rep. Steve King of Iowa put it bluntly: The money’s one thing. But what about the national security risk?
“They had access to the information on the multiple clients that they had,” King told Schilling, Breitbart reported. “They would have had access to all the information that came through all those computers in all those offices and access to … all the communications of the foreign affairs committee.”
That’s when Schilling made his “treason” quip.
It’s too early to tell at this point what the national security dangers from Awan’s role with the Democrats are, and where the trail — the trail of smashed computer hard drives — will lead. But one red flag rises high. Wasserman Schultz’s failure to fire Awan months ago is a dereliction of duty to the American people — a failure to side with caution. And that alone prompts even more suspicions and red flag risings.
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