Wasserman Schultz defends fired aide
Staffer faces bank fraud indictment
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said Tuesday that nothing has happened to change her belief that she did the right thing by keeping an information technology aide on the payroll long after other members of Congress fired him when they learned he was under investigation.
Imran Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were indicted last week in Washington, D.C., on four counts of bank fraud and unlawful monetary transactions.
“He’s not my staffer. He no longer works for me. And when he was arrested, I terminated him,” she said. “I kept him on the payroll during the time that he was not arrested and not charged with anything. And that was because, as I said, that I was concerned about the violation of his due process rights and also that there were racial and ethnic profiling concerns as
well.”
Awan is a Pakistani-born Muslim who is now a U.S. citizen. Wasserman Schultz said his religious faith may have been a factor in the decision to investigate Awan and his relatives.
Awan, Alvi and other relatives all worked as shared employees, drawing part-time salaries doing IT work for a large group of members of Congress.
The charges, which alleged the couple conspired to obtain home equity lines of credit on rental properties that weren’t actually residences they lived in, were not related to their work for Wasserman Schultz or the other members of Congress. The indictment resulted in a new round of criticism from conservative activists, the Republican Party, and Wasserman Schultz’s Democratic primary challenger, who said it raised questions about her actions.
Conservative websites have seized on the allegation that the couple sent $283,000 to Pakistan through a wire transfer. The indictment charges they transferred the money in January, with Awan first stating the money was for “funeral arrangements,” and then — after a credit union employee questioned the size of the transfer for that purpose — Awan “changed his reason to ‘purchasing property.’ ”
Wasserman Schultz wouldn’t say whether she thought there was anything suspicious or troubling about sending the money to Pakistan. “I don’t know anything about his personal finances, and so it’s not something that I am really able to comment on,” she said.
Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport in July. He had a ticket to Qatar that ultimately would have taken him to Pakistan with a return flight in January, according to an affidavit from an FBI special agent, which was filed in connection with the case. Alvi left the country in March and has not returned. Though she had a ticket for a return flight in September, the FBI agent “does not believe that Alvi has any intention to return to the United States.”
Wasserman Schultz said she wasn’t surprised that Alvi traveled to Pakistan. “I wasn’t surprised at the time, because they were being persecuted. Their children were being bullied at school. And they were experiencing the things that I was concerned about in terms of racial, ethnic and religious profiling, and so they lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, and she brought their children, their family to Pakistan. And so that’s my understanding,” she said.
Wasserman Schultz said Awan told her about what she described as persecution, but the congresswoman didn’t elaborate. Awan’s attorney, Christopher Gowen, has said his family was staying with extended family in Pakistan because the family lost its source of income “and because extremist right-wing bloggers were beginning to harass them and their children.”
Wasserman Schultz spoke about the Awan case in an Aug. 3 interview with the Sun Sentinel. She’s now beginning a heavy schedule of events in her Broward/ Miami-Dade County district during the last half of the August congressional recess. Tuesday was the first time reporters from multiple South Florida news outlets had a chance to ask her about the Awan case since the July arrest and last week’s indictment.
Wasserman Schultz answered questions for about 10 minutes following a closed-door meeting in Davie with about 20 health care leaders she periodically consults with about the Affordable Care Act.
A segment of audio from her Aug. 3 interview with the Sun Sentinel is being used in an anti-Wasserman Schultz online ad, titled “Corrupt,” put out by the campaign arm for House Republicans. During the back-and-forth with reporters Tuesday, she was careful to try and avoid providing sound bites that could show up in future ads against her. Examples: Asked if she could vouch for Awan’s innocence, she responded: “I have been concerned throughout this process that like any other American that he is given due process and that the system be allowed to work and once that process occurred, once he was arrested and charged with a crime, then I was certainly satisfied that he was getting the due process that he needed, and I terminated [him]. But before that, when he was not, I wanted to make sure that I stood for making sure that someone’s rights were protected. It was important for me to do that.”
Asked if she had “thoughts” on suggestions floating around the internet that Awan could have been involved in selling information to the Russians, Wasserman Schultz said, “I don’t have any thoughts on that,” and repeated her statement about due process.
Earlier this year, members of Congress were told that Awan and relatives and friends — several of whom did IT work for lawmakers — were under investigation and had their access to the House network suspended. Most members of Congress terminated them immediately. Wasserman Schultz said her office developed new job duties that didn’t involve work in the IT network.
No government agency has stated why the investigation started, what Awan’s family was suspected of, or why their access to the House IT network was curtailed.
The conservative website The Daily Caller, which has published more than 20 articles on the subject since February, suggested Awan’s July arrest was a way to keep him in the country while an investigation into what it said is improper billing for computer equipment involving the House of Representatives continued.
Barbara Effman, president of the West Broward Democratic Club and a longtime Wasserman Schultz supporter, said the congresswoman’s decision to stand by the accused employee to ensure his due process rights weren’t violated was the right thing to do.
And, she said, people shouldn’t jump to conclusions about Wasserman Schultz’s political fate based on negative comments some post on Facebook and other social media sites. “Most of them don’t even live in her district,” Effman said. “The people in her district love her.”
On other issues, Wasserman Schultz said:
Sanctions and diplomatic efforts must be intensified against the Venezuelan regime led by its increasingly dictatorial president, Nicolas Maduro. Weston, where Wasserman Schultz lives, is home to many Venezuelan expatriates. She said U.S. military action, something hinted at recently by President Donald Trump, is not a viable option.
“I am deeply concerned about what continues to be a horrific situation spiraling ever downward in Venezuela. … We have to continue to utilize strong, aggressive sanctions against the Maduro regime and tighten the vise that ensures that we can use diplomatic and sanctions-oriented policies to push Venezuela in the direction that they should be going, toward democracy,” she said.
Confederate monuments and statues should be removed from public places in Florida.
“Anything that has put a Confederate participant in a place of honor causes pain for individuals who faced hundreds of years of enslavement and torture. We treated people in this country, African-Americans in this country, inhumanely and as subhumans for hundreds of years. And to be putting in positions of honor the memories of individuals who fought not only to end the Union, and secede and create a different country, they fought to do that in the name of keeping people enslaved. That is un-America,” she said.
Trump should be condemned for his comments that didn’t unequivocally condemn white supremacists and place all the blame on them for the violent Aug. 12 protests in Charlottesville, Va.
“He’s abdicated any moral authority and demonstrated that he is on the wrong side of this debate,” she said. “For the president of the United States to not fully and firmly repudiate white supremacy, Nazism and the ideology that those protesters were promoting is disgusting.”