Congress paid fired Muslims $850,000
The House of Representatives quietly paid $850,000 this year to settle wrongful termination claimsby five Pakistani American technology specialists, after a set of routine workplace allegations against them morphed into fodder for right-wing conspiracy theories amplified by President Donald Trump.
Together, the payments represent one of the largest known awards by the House to resolve discrimination or harassment claims.
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.
In 2018, Trump stood next to President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and implied that one of the employees involved in the House case — a “Pakistani gentleman,” he said — could have been responsible for stealing emails ofdemocratic officials leaked during the 2016 campaign.
His own intelligence agencies had concluded that the stolen emails were part of an election interference campaign ordered by Moscow.
In early 2017, the House stripped their access to congressional servers, making it impossible for them to work. One by one, the lawmakers terminated them.
As the allegations trickled into conservative media in early 2017, they began to take on a life of their own.
The Daily Caller published allegations that the workers had hacked into congressional computer networks, and other right-wing pundits speculated that they were Pakistani spies.
In 2018, the Justice Department concluded it had found “no evidence” Awan was guilty of wrongdoing.