The Increasingly Twisted Tale of Wasserman Schultz and the Awan Brothers

The sordid story of the Pakistani IT staffers employed by Democrat House members until they were banned from those networks over suspected data theft gets stranger by the day, with one of the brothers, Imran Awan, detained last week as he was trying to leave the country after wiring $300,000 to Pakistan.

What makes the story even more bizarre — hard to do given that Wasserman Schultz had reportedly continued to pay Awan until his arrest and has been generally uncooperative with police, even berating them to return computer equipment that was taken as evidence as part of the investigation — is that left-leaning media outlets are going out of their way to discredit the story by linking it to conspiracy theories and President Donald Trump.

Check out the headline from #FakeNews @nytimes on the #ImranAwan arrest pic.twitter.com/BRqr6pBrSV

— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) July 29, 2017

In fact, The Daily Caller (which broke the story and has been following it for months, even reporting fears the brothers were actually blackmailing their former employers), reports that the mainstream press has been doing “its best to keep the public in the dark.”

That trend continued this week, even after [DC reporter Luke] Rosiak reported the existence of the FBI investigation, and even after Awan — a top Democratic staffer — was arrested trying to flee the country to Pakistan.

The Washington Post — whose motto is “Democracy dies in darkness” — kept its readers in the dark for months about the growing scandal. The Post published its first article on the House IT scandal Wednesday afternoon, noting Awan’s arrest for bank fraud.

For comparison, Rosiak has written more than 20 news stories on the scandal.

They’ve got a solid point. Take Buzzfeed’s hot take for example. That outlet downplays what is legitimately a scandal of possible dangerous proportions (the national security implications are frightening given who the Awans were working for) by coloring the story as little more than a case of bank fraud that conspiracy theorists want to blow open to embarrass Democrats. They even suggest racism due to the Awans’ Pakistani nationality.

There is hope for a more rational approach, however, as one bi-partisan group has reportedly had enough of the attempts to minimize the scandal and has decided to ask the Congressional Ethics Office to open an investigation.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a nonpartisan government watchdog group, today called for the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). According to the Washington Post, FACT’s complaint focuses on whether Congressman Wasserman Schultz broke House Ethics rules when she continued to pay an Imran Awan, an IT aide, right up until he tried to flee the country.

It’s too bad FACT can’t include in their ethics probe all media outlets stepping outside the bounds of their journalist integrity to protect Democrats and Schultz in what could turn out to be one of the largest scandals to come out of the Obama era.

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