Obstruction of Justice Read online

  On at least two occasions, it appeared that Congress members fired legislative aides at Imran’s request. “Imran would come in and only help the member—he’d tell me this—because ‘staff come and go.’ There was one staffer whose computer was broken and who was in charge of paying bills, and she said, ‘I’m not going to pay my invoices until you fix my computer.’ He went to the member and they fired her that day. Imran has that power.”

  He and numerous other contractors I spoke to were befuddled when Imran’s employers refused their offers to do the same work for a fraction of what they were paying Imran and his relatives. Why would they be so adamant about losing money for poor service? “Staffers would say ‘Imran said he’d get our copier fixed and it’s been nine months,’ and I’d offer to do the work Imran was doing for a quarter of the price. The members said ‘no, he’s our man.’ I can’t articulate how loyal they were to him,” Taylor said.

  Imran solicited a cash bribe from Taylor in order to sell access to a Florida congresswoman’s office. If he paid, Imran would ensure that Taylor’s company got work from newly elected Congresswoman Gwen Graham. “Imran said, ‘There is this new member from Florida named Graham, let’s make a deal and I’ll get you into this office.’ He showed me a letter and I said, ‘Look, Imran, I can’t do that, it’s not legal.’ ” The letter was a commitment to award a contract. “And at 8 a.m. the next morning, he had another signed letter rescinding it and said, ‘Let’s go with Lockheed instead.’ How the hell did he have enough control over a member that by 8 a.m. the member has done his exact bidding? If you were a new member who just got elected, don’t you think they’d be like, ‘Why are we switching, you told me yesterday the other was better?’ ”

  Imran would go to Pakistan for months at a time, Taylor said. He recalled eating lunch with Imran and two other colleagues in a cafeteria in the Cannon House Office Building when Imran told him frightening stories about his supposed power in Pakistan. “I have these guys that work for the Faisalabad police department, and all we have to do is pay them $100 a month and they take [people] over to the police station, strip their clothes off, hang them upside down and beat them with a shoe,” Imran told the crew.

  “We were all like, ‘what the fuck,’ ” Taylor said. “We said, ‘he’s a fucking monster.’ ”

  Of the forty-four Congress members that the Awan group worked for, I’d focused on those with sensitive national security positions. But Taylor said other lawmakers were the keys. “Gregory Meeks is buddy-buddy with Imran. Andre Carson or DWS [Debbie Wasserman Schultz] will tell a member you need to use this person, and Imran goes over there and helps people and Imran will say, ‘put this guy on the books,’ [referring to one of his relatives] and the member will say okay. DWS is always causing problems. This is one more time when her data was made vulnerable.” Representatives Meeks and Carson are both members of the Congressional Black Caucus representing inner-city districts. Carson is one of two Muslim members of Congress and also serves on the Intelligence Committee. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of course, had led the Democratic National Committee from May 2011 through July 2016.

  Taylor told me that Imran was frequently at the Democratic National Committee. From payroll records, though, I discovered that he had only been on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s congressional payroll, not that of the DNC. The law requires a strict separation between taxpayer-funded entities and donor-funded entities so that government funds aren’t used for the benefit of incumbents. This raised further suspicions. Taylor said, “I was a member of the DNC Club”—a private restaurant for Democratic insiders on the first floor of the DNC building, a block away from the Capitol—“and would always see him walking through the little alley and he’d always tell me, ‘Oh, the chairwoman’s really busy.’ He’d always call her the chairwoman. His phone would ring, and he’d show me it’d say ‘Schultz’ and he’d answer, ‘Madam chairwoman,’ because he always treated her like that. She’d call him all the time. That goes to show he must have been doing some work at the DNC too. Those things are so disorganized, I have no doubt he was doing something there. Anything Imran does is for money.” If Imran was secretly working at the DNC, it raised the question of whether he was involved in the hacking of the DNC emails. But I didn’t spend any time thinking about that possibility, and focused on the well-documented breach documented in the House server logs.

  Nevertheless, a simple search of Imran’s name on the WikiLeaks site revealed that Imran was on a first-name basis with DNC officials and had access to Wasserman Schultz’s electronic devices at the DNC. On May 4, 2016, DNC Assistant to the Chair Amy Kroll wrote: “I do not have access to her iPad password, but Imran does.”3 A DNC spokeswoman did not deny that Imran frequently went to its headquarters but would not explain why. The WikiLeaks emails also highlighted the kind of access an IT aide could have. In a May 12, 2016 exchange, Rosalyn Kumar, an aide to Wasserman Schultz, wrote: “Pelosi is doing a closed door meeting. No staff or anyone allowed. Kaitlyn come to Rayburn room and get [DWS’] iPad for Imran.”4

  Putting the DNC aside, if even half of Taylor’s other allegations checked out, this was an explosive story. I assumed other reporters would be fighting to get it, so I asked Taylor not to speak to any other journalists. He told me he had already emailed much of what he’d told me to the Washington Post, ensuring it wouldn’t go overlooked by having a friend who worked as a science reporter there, Brady Dennis, send it directly to his political-beat colleagues. Given his credentials and what seemed to be the obviously newsworthy topic of cybersecurity issues on Capitol Hill, Taylor was shocked that he never heard back. So, he reluctantly agreed to be my exclusive source. In retrospect, this competitive posturing was a mistake on my part. He told me, “I really want to see this story through.” I promised him I wouldn’t let it go.

  I went through my database, calling House IT aides until I found one willing to speak with me. After Congress banned the Awans, many members suddenly needed IT aides. Pat Sowers took over the office of Don McEachin, a newly elected Democrat from Virginia. Sowers had, in fact, been originally slated to set up the office after the election. “Within a week of the election,” however, “McEachin’s chief of staff called me and wanted to hire me, but they were told to hire Imran. By who I don’t know, but they were very clear on it,” Sowers said. This meant that even though the Awans had, according to Buzzfeed, been under investigation for “months,” they’d been allowed to expand their roster of clients and configure the entire computer networks of newly elected members, including two new members of the Congressional Black Caucus, McEachin and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, and three new members for Florida, Charlie Crist, Darren Soto, and Stephanie Murphy. They weren’t merely allowed to do so—someone pushed them onto these members.

  What Sowers found when he arrived in February as Representative McEachin’s second-choice IT aide is that all the computers were configured to be nothing more than “thin clients” that pointed to an external server, meaning all of Representative McEachin’s data was being stored somewhere else. The computers also lacked the most basic precautions, such as antivirus software mandated by the House. The most troubling part is that no one seemed to have documented or cleaned up the configuration before his arrival. The House simply assigned him to bring the system into compliance with the House rules. No investigators ever asked him what he’d found. Sowers told me that other IT aides had shared similar stories, and worse. What it came down to, they said, is that the Awans were funneling all the data off of members’ official servers and onto one computer in an unknown location; a massive security violation.

  “I love the Hill, but to see this clear lack of concern over what appears to be a major breach bothers me,” Sowers said. “I don’t know what they have, but they have something on someone.” Sowers added, “Everyone has said for years they were breaking the rules and it’s just been a matter of time” before there was public scandal. The House had, over the years, issued rules that IT aides
thought were aimed at dealing with the Awans without having to publicly acknowledge their suspicious activities.

  I talked to other IT aides who wanted to remain anonymous and told similar stories. One had warned a member of Congress that the Awans were putting his data at risk but had been rebuffed. After the Awans were banned, he figured he was a shoe-in as a replacement for that office, but he said the member seemed to believe that he was a “snitch.” Why would a congressman be unhappy with someone for identifying computer violations?

  Another aide taking over an office configured by an Awan found that all the staffers’ phones were connected with a single Apple account that wasn’t even tied to the House. He couldn’t understand why the Awans were treated so favorably. “If I was accused of this, I’d be in jail the same day. I’d be hauled out in handcuffs and never work in government again.”

  I was beginning to think I was on to something big.

  EIGHT

  FRIGHTENING CONNECTIONS

  (2017)

  I found two groups of people who knew Imran: those who vocally described vicious behaviors tantamount to extortion, and those on Capitol Hill to whose emails he had unrestricted access to, who were strangely and rigidly silent despite plainly troubling facts.

  Outside of Congress, Imran Awan was known as a predator who would stop at nothing for a buck. In my interviews with people who knew them, the Awans were repeatedly accused of extortion, greed, and possible money laundering. Their schemes ranged from petty to frightening. Their public records footprint was easier to follow than most because Imran Awan was an extraordinarily busy man. Virginia corporation records showed about a dozen purported companies running out of the Awans’ homes, or established in their names, that weren’t disclosed on their mandatory House ethics disclosures. His lawyer later told me he had “no idea” what these companies did, implying that police never asked. Operating out of Imran’s home in Lorton, for example, was New Dawn 2001 LLC. Considering it was created not in 2001 but in 2011, part of me wondered: What happened in 2001 that a Pakistani might consider a “new dawn?”

  Their extensive real estate holdings also provided a road map to interview those who had dealt with them. In one marathon day, I put about 100 miles on my 2007 Corolla, hitting addresses associated with the Awans’ complex web of rental properties, LLCs, and lawsuits.

  At what I had guessed was Imran’s actual residence in Lorton—an exurb of D.C. synonymous in local parlance with a now shuttered federal prison there—a marine named Andre Taggart had recently moved in. He said someone named Alex had listed the home for rent on a military housing website. I later learned that all of the Awans went by aliases. “When we first moved in, a guy came with certified mail from the House of Representatives. We were trying to be nice and signed for it. We went to take it to [Imran] and he lost his shit, saying ‘Why did you sign for it, this is illegal.’ The postman came a second time with a certified letter and I called Imran on the spot: ‘What do you want me to do?’ He said, ‘Just send him away, I’m homeless,’ ” Taggart told me.

  Soon after, he received a call from a D.C. law firm demanding he return electronic devices left in the home. “He threatened to sue us; it was unbelievable,” he said. The aggressiveness of the demand piqued his curiosity, and in the garage, he found a cache of hard drives and phones that he recognized as government equipment. There were “Blackberries, print servers, wireless routers, hard drives that look like they had tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand-new expensive toner,” he said. Taggart'd had enough. First, Imran had used a military-geared website to find renters, then tried to remove a legally required provision from the contract allowing that if the military deployed the family, they could break the lease without penalty, he said. Next, he pressured him into signing an unusually long three-year lease, but immediately after having him sign, he listed the house for sale and demanded that the family constantly leave for a few hours at a time so realtors could show it to prospective buyers. Now Imran kept showing up trying to get these electronics, but Taggart didn’t feel comfortable letting him in, and the intensity with which he wanted them back let him know that something wasn’t right. He called the military police to report suspected stolen government equipment and was surprised when two different agencies—the Capitol Police and the FBI— responded instead to interview him and collect the items.

  Even the backstory to the Awans’ many homes involved fraud. The middle brother, Abid, owned two homes, one of which was deeded to him by Imran. The other had been used in a mortgage fraud scheme between a corrupt real estate agent from the firm Fairfax Realty and an illegal immigrant who fled the United States to escape a felony charge. Government licensing documents show that Imran also worked at Fairfax Realty at the same time he was earning $165,000 from Congress. In fact, he wasn’t just a real estate agent, he was a broker; a designation that typically signified someone who oversaw large financial transactions and supervised others. To get this license, one had to swear that he was working forty hours a week in the real estate business. This second full-time job was another thing Imran didn’t list on his House ethics disclosure form.

  Some of Imran’s homes were previously tied to Johar Mirza, who is the same age as Imran and emigrated from the same city in Pakistan. He is also on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He fled to Scotland to avoid mortgage fraud charges in Virginia, raped a woman there, and then—facing deportation to Pakistan—claimed he’d converted to Judaism and sought refugee status, saying Pakistan killed Jews.1 In the Virginia suburbs, Johar and his brother Gohar ran a mortgage scheme that involved creating fake IT companies and pretending unqualified buyers worked there.

  * * *

  Another rental property tenant was Laurel Everly. She told me Imran said the home was actually his, but it was officially owned by Hina. The lease said she was renting it from Imran’s father Muhammad, and Imran instructed her to give him rent checks made out to another relative, Hina’s mother Suriyah Begum. Imran was frequently in Pakistan, so she had to drive checks to Imran’s friend, Rao Abbas. The house was run down, but Everly was separated from her husband, her small business had just failed, and she told Imran she needed a short rental while she tried to reconcile with her spouse. He tried to make her sign a three-year lease anyway, and, she said, would do anything for a buck. “The property was trashed. The cabinets in it were twenty years older than the house. When he bought the house, he sold the cabinets in them and brought in older ones. Think about that, it’s a crazy thing to do. The dishwasher was on wheels and hooked up to the sink," Everly said.

  “He became very abusive and threatening. He was trying to get me to pay for all kinds of different made up damages.” He demanded she pay him $350 because the flowers in the home’s garden were dead. . . in January. These demands came under threat of lawsuit. “He’s an extortionist, a horrible, horrible person. You want to wonder if he’s capable of doing something bad in Congress? Absolutely. He threatened me, all these attempts to get money from me in different ways. He probably knew I was vulnerable and that’s why he took advantage of me.”

  When the basement flooded after a storm, Imran demanded that Everly pay $10,000 to replace the drywall. She pointed out that the basement flooded because Imran had not bought a sump pump. “How dare I question his integrity, he was a high-ranking federal employee who had passed a background investigation,” she recounted Imran saying. He even set her up, she said, creating a situation where she agreed in writing to handle replacing a filter in an air conditioner, and then later falsely said she’d broken the entire unit by installing it wrong and would have to pay for a new one. He knew the AC was always broken, and she saw his efforts to create a liability-shifting paper trail in advance as a petty example of a strategic, months-long con where “the whole thing was telegraphed.”

  Imran took half of her security deposit for supposed repairs and, after Everly documented that there were no damages, he said he was in Pakistan and could not return the money. “He e
mailed me from his House email address, which is "[email protected]” to say that he was in Pakistan and wouldn’t have his cell phone, but would be using that work address.

  When Imran wasn’t in Pakistan, he was a frequent visitor to the rental. “Imran came all the time to get stacks and stacks of mail for all different people,” including an invitation to the White House Christmas party, Laurel said. She suspected that he might be stealing people’s identities, and worried that he could have stolen hers. He also used these visits to check on some sort of equipment that was running in a shed. “He insisted the power had to be left on to keep what’s in there cool. I’m pretty sure he was running computer equipment on my property. I do believe that shed with the light and the fan that he was always coming and going from was probably a server.” Of course, Everly had to foot the electricity bill for whatever was in the shed. Meanwhile, the house appeared to have a second internet connection in addition to the one she paid for, but she wasn’t allowed to use it. Imran’s lawyer later claimed that the prior owner had locked the shed and Imran had never tried to open it in all those years, implying police never looked.

  The Awans’ commercial dealings often led to legal disputes. They were frequently sued, and they frequently sued others. Cristal Perpignan, a high-level federal IT executive at the General Services Administration, got locked in a landlord-tenant lawsuit with Imran after he attempted to make her pay for water damage caused by old leaking pipes. The legal paperwork included photographs of what appeared to be Imran’s entire family calling attention to a tiny nail hole in the wall, the kind left by hanging a small picture frame. The whole thing was laughably petty from a family that cleared the better part of one million dollars a year. Wasn’t their time worth more than this? The most chilling part was, because they went to such lengths to document things and knew how to work the system, they won the lawsuit.