KEY Piece of EVIDENCE in Awan Brothers Case Stolen From Congress
SOURCE : https://goo.gl/frLZSB
Something stinks to high heaven.
This past week, the former IT guru, and right-hand man to disgraced former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz struck a plea deal in his “cyber hacking” case with the U.S. Government.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he will not be seeking to press charges against Pakistani national Imran Awan and his wife – a decision President Trump is not happy about.
However, did Sessions opt to strike a plea deal with Awan, because the KEY PIECE of evidence – the SERVER – was stolen from Congress?
A server belonging to the House Democratic Caucus went missing in early 2017 after it had been identified by the inspector general as a key piece of evidence in a hacking probe.
The Office of Inspector General had found months earlier that a group of House IT workers had logged in to the server 5,735 times during the surveyed period between October 2015 and April 2016.
The IT workers, most of whom were members of the Awan family, were working at that time for dozens of House Democrats, earning an estimated $7 million since 2004.
Imran Awan was first hired by House Democrats in 2004, after which two of his brothers, his wife, and his sister-in-law were added to the congressional payroll despite having little to no IT experience.
In a behind-closed-door briefing to the House leadership in September 2016, the inspector general said their activity was suspicious in part because the IT workers had taken steps to conceal their identities.
“Excessive logons are an indication that the server is being used for nefarious purposes and elevated the risk that individuals could be reading and/or removing information,” reads a presentation by the inspector general that was not released to the public.
The inspector general also warned of the risk that the server could be used as a repository to store documents “taken from other offices or evidence of other illicit activity.”
The investigation had uncovered Dropbox accounts installed on at least two Democratic Caucus computers used by the IT workers, against House IT policy.
The two accounts associated with the Dropbox accounts on the computers each contained thousands of files.
“We have not been permitted to view content of the files on these workstations. However, based on the file names, some of the information is likely sensitive,” the presentation says.
The inspector general also warned House leadership that the accounts could have been used to exfiltrate information.
“While file-sharing sites, such as Dropbox, have legitimate business purposes, use of such sites is also a classic method for insiders to exfiltrate data from an organization.”
Server Goes Missing
Following a second briefing in late September 2016, in which the House inspector warned the House leadership of “continuing unauthorized access,” the investigation was moved to the Capitol Police in October.
It was not until months later, on Feb. 2, 2017, that the House sergeant at arms banned the IT workers from the House network.
The Democratic Caucus server, which had been identified by the inspector general as ground zero of the suspicious activity, had disappeared at that time.
Three senior government officials with knowledge of the situation told the Daily Caller News Foundation last year that it had been physically stolen.
The server had disappeared just weeks before Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), who was the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, left his position to become California’s attorney general.
Police had informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and had requested a copy of it, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported last year, based on an account from a senior official.
The official also said that the police were provided with an elaborate falsified image of the server.
Sensitive Information on Server
According to the inspector general, the Awans made numerous unauthorized log ins to systems of House members. Besides the members they worked for, they also accessed servers of 15 House representatives they didn’t work for.
Information stored on the servers is considered extremely sensitive in nature and contains representatives’ personal data, calendars, emails, and information provided by constituents, such as personal and medical problems as well as their contact information and, in some cases, Social Security numbers.
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