".Obliterated File" Reveals That Imran Awan Wiped His Phone Just Hours Before His Arrest

Conjuring up images of Hillary and her team bashing Blackberry phones with hammers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Mirando revealed in a court hearing Friday that embattled Congressional IT staffer Imran Awan apparently wiped his cell phone clean just hours before being arrested by the FBI at Dulles airport while attempting to flee to Pakistan.  As Forbes points out this morning, this new information came out in a hearing in which Awan"s attorney argued that his curfew should be lifted and his ankle bracelet removed.

Imran Awan, the IT professional Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) kept on her congressional payroll long after it became known he was under investigation by the Capitol Police, wiped his phone hours before he was arrested last July.

But we are just starting to learn about this case. This is new revelation that Awan wiped his phone just before he attempted to fly away to Pakistan came out last Friday when Awan appeared in court.

Awan’s attorney, Chris Gowen, argued that Awan should have his curfew lifted and that the tracking device on his ankle should be removed.

This prompted Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Mirando to say that when Imran was arrested at Dulles International Airport a cellphone found on him “had been wiped clean just a few hours before.”

Awan"s attorney, and long-time Clinton employee (see: Arrested DNC Staffer Awan Retains Long-Time Clinton Associate For Legal Help), Chris Gowen tried to argue that Awan"s phone was blank because he had just purchased it while seemingly hoping that the FBI had simply overlooked the ".obliterate file" that was created when the phone was intentionally wiped clean. 

Gowen tried to counter this by telling the judge: “Awan had recently bought the phone, so of course it didn’t have any data on it.”

But Mirando countered by saying the FBI found that the phone had been wiped on purpose. A time stamp on the iPhone indicated it had been wiped at 6:30 p.m. that evening (Awan was arrested around 10 p.m.). Awan also had a laptop on him, but one of the few things on the computer was a resume. Mirando used this and other details—such as that the Awan’s quickly sold many of their Virginia properties—to explain that Imran had no intention of returning.

The iPhone Awan was carrying has a feature built in that allows someone to wipe it before they sell it. Investigators were nevertheless able to determine when it was wiped because the phone created a “.obliterated” file with a time stamp.

There are some cases where an iPhone won’t create a .obliterated file that can be easily found, but there are other techniques used by investigators to uncover and see when an iPhone was wiped.

Awan might be a savvy former IT professional, but in this case the FBI was able to see that he purposely deleted data before showing up for his flight to Pakistan. Awan knew his wife had been detained temporarily at the airport and questioned, so he had reason to believe the same would happen to him.

Shockingly, Gowen didn"t use his former employer"s "like with a cloth" defense which proved so effective for Hillary...

Wasserman Schultz Aide Pleads ‘Not Guilty’ As Prosecution Drops Hints About A Broader Probe Of Awan

By Jamie Dupree of PBP.

Former U.S. House IT aide Imran Awan pleaded not guilty Friday to federal charges that he and his wife lied on an application for a home equity loan, as prosecutors dropped hints about a broader probe of Awan and his family members related to their computer work in recent years for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and a series of other Democratic lawmakers in the Congress.

A federal judge also agreed to return $9,000 seized from Awan when he was arrested at Dulles Airport in late July, as the feds and Awan’s legal team agreed to ensure that the money is used only to pay for the cost of Awan’s legal defense.

While the existing case against Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, is related to whether they did not tell the truth on a loan application to a Capitol Hill credit union – documents in the matter again suggested at a larger investigation, possibly relating to more than just matters of bank fraud.

In a letter about evidence in the case, U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips described the probe as one that involved, “voluminous discovery,” citing items that were found in a Congressional office building back in April, which seemingly may have belonged to Awan.

This "laptop bag" found in April could well be the piece of equipment that had drawn the interest of Rep. Wasserman Schultz earlier this year, when she verbally berated the Capitol Hill Police chief at a House budget hearing, demanding that an item be returned to her office.

“I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way,” Wasserman Schultz said bluntly, as she told the chief that he should “expect that there will be consequences.”

The chief said he was not returning the piece of equipment that officers had found, because it was part of an investigation, which he did not detail.

From prosecutors, this evidence letter was the first official confirmation that there were items found on Capitol Hill which had a direct link to Imran Awan.

Still unclear is what exactly that earlier investigation has uncovered.

In a hearing before Federal Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the judge refused to allow a citizen investigator from Indiana to join the case; he claimed he could provide evidence to the feds that shows a broader misuse of government resources by Awan and his family during their Capitol Hill employment.

Judge in #Awan hearing wants request to grant Awan more freedom in writing. Will issue ruling by Oct 6

— BuckTheSystem (@RiggedSys) September 1, 2017

Awan, his wife, and several of their relatives were barred from the Congressional IT system in February, as Democratic lawmakers quickly fired them from part-time IT jobs – but Capitol Police and investigators have still not formally said what problem led to that decision.

Unlike other Democrats who had employed the family members, Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were kept on the payroll by Rep. Wasserman Schultz – Alvi until she returned to Pakistan with their children in early March, while Awan was paid until he was arrested and charged with bank fraud.

Newly released payroll figures from the U.S. House of Representatives show that Awan was paid $5,000.01 as a “shared employee” in the second quarter of 2017 by Wasserman Schultz.

That was more than the $1,494.45 that Wasserman Schultz had paid Awan in the first quarter of this year.

At today’s hearing, Awan’s lawyers asked that he be allowed to venture up to 100 miles from home, as he evidently is now driving for Uber, as a way to make money.

The judge asked for written arguments to be filed on that request. The next hearing for Awan is set for October 6.

Wasseman Szhultz’s IT staffer case raises question: How deep does the swamp actually go?

(INTELLIHUB) — Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York appeared on Fox Business to talk about Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s continued support for her former IT aide Imran Awan who was recently arrested while attempting to flee the United States.

York said that Wasserman Shultz’s former staffer had access to a lot of sensitive information, including private emails which may have been used for nefarious purposes.

“He was fleeing the country and his wife had already fled the country,” the correspondent told Fox Business. “They had transferred a lot of money to Pakistan where they were going and that’s clear evidence of wrongdoing.”

York said that if the case goes any further legally then the media will defiantly learn more about the situation. However, as of yet authorities are keeping the matter tight-lipped.

Related Video:

Featured Image: Byron York speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

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Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, analyst, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics (Intellihub.com). Shepard is also known for producing Shade: The Motion Picture (2013) and appearing on Travel Channel’s America Declassified (2013). Shepard is a regular contributor to Infowars. Read more from Shep’s World. Follow Shep on Facebook and Twitter.

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Former U.S. Attorney On Awan Indictment: "There Is Something Very Strange Going On Here"

We"ve written frequently over the past couple of months about the litany of unanswered questions surrounding the mysterious case of Debbie Wasserman Schultz"s (DWS) IT staffers.  Why did DWS seemingly threaten the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that was confiscated as part of an ongoing legal investigation?  Why did DWS keep Awan on her taxpayer funded payroll all the way up until the day he was arrested by the FBI at Dulles airport while trying to flee the country to Pakistan?  What, if anything, does the Awan family know about the DNC hacks that may have caused DWS to act in this way?

Now, Andrew McCarthy III, the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who led the prosecution against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, says there is "something very strange" about the recent indictment filed against Imran Awan and his wife Hina Alvi in the District of Columbia.

In a National Review article, McCarthy points out that it"s not what"s in the indictment that is necessarily surprising but rather what is seemingly intentionally omitted.  For instance, McCarthy points out that "the indictment appears to go out of its way not to mention" that Imran was apprehended while in the process of fleeing the country, a fact that would seem to be the best evidence available to prove the fraud charges.

Let’s say you’re a prosecutor in Washington. You are investigating a husband and wife, naturalized Americans, who you believe have scammed a federal credit union out of nearly $300,000. You catch them in several false statements about their qualifications for a credit line and their intended use of the money. The strongest part of your case, though, involves the schemers’ transferring the loot to their native Pakistan.

So . . . what’s the best evidence you could possibly have, the slam-dunk proof that their goal was to steal the money and never look back? That’s easy: One after the other, the wife and husband pulled up stakes and tried to high-tail it to Pakistan after they’d wired the funds there — the wife successfully fleeing, the husband nabbed as he was about to board his flight.

Well, here’s a peculiar thing about the Justice Department’s indictment of Imran Awan and Hina Alvi, the alleged fraudster couple who doubled as IT wizzes for Debbie Wasserman Schultz and many other congressional Democrats: There’s not a word in it about flight to Pakistan. The indictment undertakes to describe in detail four counts of bank-fraud conspiracy, false statements on credit applications, and unlawful monetary transactions, yet leaves out the most damning evidence of guilt.

In fact, the indictment appears to go out of its way not to mention it.

Why would prosecutors leave that out of their indictment? Why give Awan’s defense a basis to claim that, since the indictment does not allege anything about flight to Pakistan, the court should bar any mention of it during the trial? In fact, quite apart from the manifest case-related reasons to plead instances of flight, a competent prosecutor would have included them in the indictment simply to underscore that Awan is a flight risk who should have onerous bail conditions or even be detained pretrial.

Then there is the case of Imran"s wife, Hina Alvi.  When she fled the country back in March she was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents with over $12,000 cash in her luggage, technically a crime by itself if not properly disclosed, but was allowed by the FBI to leave the country despite having been under investigation for months. 

We must also ask, again: Why did the FBI allow Alvi to flee? Before she boarded her March 5 flight to Qatar (en route to Pakistan), agents briefly detained her. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had already searched her baggage and found $12,400 in cash. As I have pointed out, it is a felony to move more than $10,000 in U.S. currency out of the country unless one completes the required government report (see sections 5316 and 5322 of Title 31, U.S. Code). There was no indication that she did so in the complaint affidavit submitted to the court when Awan was arrested last month (see FBI complaint affidavit, pages 8–9).

By the time Alvi fled, the Awans had been under investigation by various federal agencies for at least three months. The FBI was sufficiently attuned to the Awans’ criminality that its agents went to the trouble of chasing Alvi to the airport. If she didn’t fill out the required form, she should have been arrested for the currency violation. Is it possible that, rather than arresting her, federal agents instructed her to complete the form on the spot? One would hope not, but even in such an unlikely event, Alvi would undoubtedly have made false statements about the provenance of the cash. That would also have been a felony, providing more grounds for her arrest. Why let her go, especially when, as its agent told the court in the aforementioned affidavit, the FBI “does not believe that ALVI has any intention to return to the United States”?

And then there is just the continued secrecy surrounding the case.  Why did the U.S. Attorney"s office decide against filing a press release in a case that has garnered significant national attention?  Why was the case filed in a district where DWS"s brother has been an assistant U.S. attorney for many years? 

To begin with, it is not the easiest thing to get one’s hands on the indictment. The case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. There is no press release about the indictment on the office’s website, though U.S. attorneys’ offices routinely issue press releases and make charging documents available in cases of far less national prominence. (I found the indictment through the Orlando Sentinel, which obtained and posted it in conjunction with the paper’s report on the filing of charges.)

By the way, the U.S. attorney’s office is currently led by Channing D. Phillips, an Obama holdover who was never confirmed. Still awaiting Senate confirmation is Jessie Liu, nominated by President Trump in June. Meanwhile, Steven Wasserman, Representative Wasserman Schultz’s brother, has been an assistant U.S. attorney in the office for many years. I have seen no indication that he has any formal role in the case, notwithstanding some cyberspace speculation to the contrary. What is clear, however, is that the office is low-keying the Awan prosecution.

The indictment itself is drawn very narrowly. All four charges flow from a financial-fraud conspiracy of short duration. Only Imran Awan and his wife are named as defendants. There is no reference to Awan-family perfidy in connection with the House communications system.

Of course, we"re sure it"s probably nothing but at least one former U.S. Attorney says "there is something very strange going on here."

The full Grand Jury indictment can be viewed here:

Awan Plot Thickens As NY Democrat Yvette Clarke "Quietly" Wrote-Off $120,000 Of Missing Tech Equipment

When we reported last week that Imran Awan and his wife had been indicted by a grand jury on 4 counts, including bank fraud and making false statements related to some home equity loans, we also noted that those charges could simply be placeholders for further developments yet to come.  Now, according to a new report from the Daily Caller, the more interesting component of the FBI"s investigation could be tied to precisely why New York Democrat Representative Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to simply write-off $120,000 in missing electronics tied to the Awans.

A chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to sign away a $120,000 missing electronics problem on behalf of two former IT aides now suspected of stealing equipment from Congress, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Clarke’s chief of staff at the time effectively dismissed the loss and prevented it from coming up in future audits by signing a form removing the missing equipment from a House-wide tracking system after one of the Awan brothers alerted the office the equipment was gone. The Pakistani-born brothers are now at the center of an FBI investigation over their IT work with dozens of Congressional offices.

The $120,000 figure amounts to about a tenth of the office’s annual budget, or enough to hire four legislative assistants to handle the concerns of constituents in her New York district. Yet when one of the brothers alerted the office to the massive loss, the chief of staff signed a form that quietly reconciled the missing equipment in the office budget, the official told TheDCNF. Abid Awan remained employed by the office for months after the loss of the equipment was flagged.

If true, of course this new information would seem to support previously reported rumors that the Awans orchestrated a long-running fraud scheme in which their office would purchase equipment in a way that avoided tracking by central House-wide administrators and then sell that equipment for a personal gain while simultaneously defrauding taxpayers of $1,000"s of dollars. 

Meanwhile, according to the Daily Caller, CDW Government could have been in on the scheme.

They’re suspected of working with an employee of CDW Government Inc. — one of the Hill’s largest technology providers — to alter invoices in order to avoid tracking. The result would be that no one outside the office would notice if the equipment disappeared, and investigators think the goal of the scheme was to remove and sell the equipment outside of Congress.

CDW spokeswoman Kelly Caraher told TheDCNF the company is cooperating with investigators, and has assurance from prosecutors its employees are not targets of the investigation. “CDW and its employees have cooperated fully with investigators and will continue to do so,” Caraher said. “The prosecutors directing this investigation have informed CDW and its coworkers that they are not subjects or targets of the investigation.”

Not surprisingly, Clarke"s office apparently felt no need whatsoever to report the $120,000 worth of missing IT equipment to the authorities...it"s just taxpayer money afterall...

According to the official who talked to TheDCNF, Clarke’s chief of staff did not alert authorities to the huge sum of missing money when it was brought to the attention of the office around February of 2016. A request to sign away that much lost equipment would have been “way outside any realm of normalcy,” the official said, but the office did not bring it to the attention of authorities until months later when House administrators told the office they were reviewing finances connected to the Awans.

The administrators informed the office that September they were independently looking into discrepancies surrounding the Awans, including a review of finances connected to the brothers in all the congressional offices that employed them. The House administrators asked Clarke’s then-chief of staff, Wendy Anderson, whether she had noticed any anomalies, and at that time she alerted them to the $120,000 write-off, the official told TheDCNF.

Of course, the missing $120,000 covers only Clarke’s office. As we"ve noted before, Imran and his relatives worked for more than 40 current House members when they were banned from the House network in February, and have together worked for dozens more in past years so who know just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Also makes you wonder what else Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Awans might be hiding.  Certainly the decision by Wasserman-Shultz to keep Awan on her taxpayer funded payroll, right up until he was arrested by the FBI while trying to flee the country, is looking increasingly fishy with each passing day.

Former DNC Head Debbie Wasserman Schultz is STILL covering up for IT aide who was arrested by the FBI

Imran Awan caught trying to flee the country after 300K transfer to Pakistan

WASHINGTON (INTELLIHUB) — Former DNC chairwoman and close Hillary Clinton ally Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is still blocking access to a computer seized as part of a massive cybersecurity investigation despite the fact that the target of the investigation was just arrested by the FBI as he attempted to flee the country.

According to a report from The Daily Caller, Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia after he used a House office building to wire $283,000 from the Congressional Federal Credit Union to two individuals in Pakistan. Amazingly, not only did credit union officials allow the wire to go through despite the active investigation, U.S. Customer and Border Protection also let his wife flee to Pakistan in March despite the fact that she had $12,000 in cash hidden in her suitcase.

The arrest of Awan comes just two days after the FBI seized smashed computer hard drives from a home of the former IT administrator for one of the most powerful Democratic politicians in the country.

As the DC reported, “FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.”

“Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, an individual whom FBI investigators interviewed in the case told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.”

“Imran Awan, a Pakistani-born IT aide, had access to all emails and files of dozens of members of Congress, as well as the password to the iPad that Wasserman Schultz used for Democratic National Committee business before she resigned as its head in July 2016.”

The fact that the FBI has not only seized computer equipment from Awan but has literally arrested him as he attempted to flee to Pakistan has so far not moved Wasserman Schultz enough to allow a key piece of evidence in the case to actually be examined.

That’s right, Schultz has actively worked to stop the investigation for months, going as far as to publicly threaten the police and then, when that didn’t work, use a clause within the Constitution to stop the police from actually examining the laptop in question.

As I reported in late May, Wasserman Schultz is likely involved in a massive coverup that reaches to the highest levels of the Democratic Party and her disgusting attempt at abuse of power during a budget hearing makes this stunning fact perfectly clear.

“During the hearing, Schultz spent nearly three minutes grilling the police chief over the confiscation of a laptop that is connected to an active investigation, going as far as trying to extract a promise that the computer would be returned, a move that if allowed to happen would surely hinder the criminal investigation.

After being told that the laptop was a key piece of evidence in the investigation, Schultz then preceded to publicly threaten the police chief!”

“I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences,” the top Democrat told Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa.

Fast forwarding to this week, Fox News reported days before Awan’s arrest that Wasserman Schultz is now “negotiating” with police, through her lawyers, to allow them to examine the key piece of evidence.

“The former head of the Democratic Party who lost her post in the fallout from a massive email breach is expected to start cooperating with federal investigators in a separate cyber security case, after months of apparent stonewalling,” reported Fox News.

“U.S. Capitol Police have had the laptop for months and until now had been unable to get access. It’s unclear why the Florida lawmaker and ousted Democratic National Committee chairwoman had been battling law enforcement over the computer; however, her counsel began negotiating this week with Capitol Police in connection with the probe.”

One can only imagine that the negotiating going on behind the scenes involves her lawyers attempting to secure immunity for their client who has so far shown all the signs of someone that is guilty.

To recap, a top IT staffer for various Democrats has been arrested attempting to flee the country and the former head of the Democratic National Party is still holding back key evidence in the case while she “negotiates” with police.

Can you imagine the hysteria if this had anything at all to do with President Trump?!

Alex Thomas is an opinion journalist and editor for Intellihub News. He was a founding member of what later became Intellihub.com and an integral part of the team that destroyed the mainstream media blockade of Bilderberg in 2012. You can contact him here.

Featured Image: U.S. Capitol Police Budget Hearing – House of Representatives

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