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FBI arrest former IT staffer for many Democrats in Congress

A real Washington scandal: The FBI on Tuesday arrested a former Congressional IT staffer as he was trying to flee the country.

The man, Imran Aran, had run the computer systems for many Democrats in Congress, including former DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And while most Democrats fired Aran when he came under investigation months ago, Wasserman Schultz had kept in on her payroll until his arrest this week.

Several details that give some important political context to this story, and are not mentioned in the CNN article above:

The last story above includes other details about how Aran also threatened the renter of his home for cooperating with police. As the renter (a Marine and apparently a Democrat) noted, “He’s dangerous. This is a crime syndicate that has successfully infiltrated Congress,” he said. “If Donald Trump and the Republicans had hired foreign nationals to be their top IT guys and somehow their congressional files had been compromised, this would have been all over the news.”

Update: The correction above is because the news article linked to had mistakenly said that the hard drives were taken from Wasserman Schultz’s home. There were instead recovered from the Marine above when he found them in Aran’s former home, which he was now renting.

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25 comments

  • wayne

    Mark Levin covered this Wednesday night. And Michelle Malkin Investigates, is following it as well.

    Aran, and practically his entire family, all had government jobs working for various democrat reps & senators.

    “Michelle Malkin Has Some GREAT Questions on House Dem IT Scandal ”
    CRTV 7-26-17
    https://youtu.be/qoDox5rigS4
    2:29

  • Wayne: In general the conservative press has been following this story. I only posted today about it because I wanted to give that overall context, including the reluctance of the mainstream Democratic news media to cover it.

    I will be following this story, though based on past history I expect the Democrats to get off scott free. At present the law in this country only applies to Republicans

  • Cotour

    So, so, so many strings, which one to begin pulling?

    Its coming, it must happen, the reconciliation of the abuses of power within the sphere of the political realm must occur for all of our sakes.

    So many strings, and they are all going to lead to one central abuser, Hillary Clinton, and the people who have surrounded her within her own Foundation and her 2016 election campaign.

  • wayne

    Mr. Z.–
    Yes, please follow this as much as you’re able. (I always like to read the actual indictment PDF’s but I haven’t searched for them yet.)
    Yes, you don’t jump on everything that pops up on Drudge, and for that I am greatly appreciative!
    –I pay for CRTV and don’t watch FOX (or any cable news anymore,) and sorta forget about mainstream-media, so I’m glad you monitor it for me!

    I greatly fear for the Republic.
    I remain all-in on an Article 5 Convention as the last legal, non-violent solution, but concurrently as well, I fear kinetic action of some sort, is coming our way a lot sooner than I might have predicted just 6 months ago.
    (The left is completely unhinged and the republican’s have totally revealed themselves as partners-in-crime against the people.)

    “Livin’ On The Edge”
    Aerosmith
    https://youtu.be/7nqcL0mjMjw

  • Garry

    One small correction: the computer hard drives that had been smashed by a hammer were removed from the home of the IT staffer, not from Wassermann Schultz’s home as stated in one of the links in the opening post.

    I’ll be interested to see if this investigation goes anywhere.

  • Garry: Can you provide a source for this correction? The link was very clear that the drives were in Wasserman Schultz’s home.

  • Garry: Never mind. I found a source and am adding it to the post.

  • mike shupp

    Uhhhh … okay, I am — comparatively speaking — a left winger here. I voted for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump, for instance. But also, I’m an old time computer guy, who learned to program 50 years ago when Fortran II was the brand new computer language, and who rushed out almost forty years ago to spend near two thousand bucks to buy a Kaypro II microcomputer running CPM 2.2 with 64 Kilobytes of RAM memory and two 5-inch floppy drives.

    Everybody here’s younger than me, right? Everybody here’s up on the modern stuff than an old left wing fart couldn’t possibly understand. Wayne, Garry, Cotour, you’re just so much better people, so much more attuned to the modern age than folks like me. You know it all!

    Okay. I’ve got some computer hardware I’ve held on to over the years. An IBM-style mechanical keyboard, an Intel 686-based PC for running PC-DOS games, 3 or 4 SATA hard drives and a PATA hard drive with SMART issues that I hold onto with the notion that I might someday need them as short-run backups. You clever folks understand all, right?

    Now. oddly enough, over the years, I’ve actually thrown some computer gear away. I don’t own a Kaypro II anymore, I don’t own a Kaypro 286 running MS-DOS 2.2, I don’t even own an Intel-686 machine with half a gigabyte of memory and a big big big 6 Gigabyte hard drive. Amazing, isn’t it?

    And I don’t have any hard drives lying around that I’ve smashed up with a hammer. Isn’t that strange? And I don’t know any other people who hold onto smashed up computer hard drives. Golly, this is strange! I mean most people, liberal or conservative, who want to get rid of computer hard drives just thrown them into the trash and send them off to a landfill, where it’s virtually impossible to ever find them again.

    I know, I’m weird. Unlike you clever folk, I don’t know people who hold on to smashed up computer hard drives. I don’t even know people who save smashed up computer hard drives for their friends. You’re all so much wiser than me.

    Please explain, in simple language, why people in left wing political circles harbor smashed up computer hard drives. I really want to know.

  • Garry

    mike shupp wrote,

    “Wayne, Garry, Cotour, you’re just so much better people, so much more attuned to the modern age than folks like me. You know it all!”

    This is where I stopped reading; I certainly don’t consider myself to be a better person (nor do I consider myself to be more attuned to the modern age).

    The conservative/libertarian approach appeals to me because it recognizes human nature, whereas the liberal philosophy seems to have a misplaced trust in government and the know-it-alls who run it. Your sarcastic accusation reveals a lot more about the liberal philosophy that it does about us know-it-all conservatives/libertarians.

    Ask the question without trolling and I’ll consider it. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be able to provide a useful answer; I readily admit that there is much I don’t know.

  • Cotour

    First, Mike, I fully appreciate your sharp although drawn out sarcasm, well done. Please keep in mind that posting here is a kind of therapy for me :)

    I do not know exactly why someone in the DNC or working for the DNC would choose to smash their hard drives, but they did. And they also did it related to 13 of Hillary’s devices that as I understand were under subpoena. They also used Bleach Bit to permanently delete the information in some instances.

    To me what appears to have happened, as a last desperate action when whom ever was in control of the devices realized that what they have been doing that is illegal and that is recorded on the devices would become known through an FBI investigation. And although the act of destroying the devices is itself a crime it must have been deemed the lesser of two evils. (You really do not need this explained to you, do you?)

    Q: As this evidence slowly reveals itself and if it reveals evidence that condemns Hillary and the people that surrounded her, you being a Hillary supporter, what is it that you would think appropriate as a solution? That is if you agree that their needs to be a solution.

  • Edward

    mike shupp,
    You requested: “Please explain, in simple language, why people in left wing political circles harbor smashed up computer hard drives. I really want to know.

    It would be better to ask the people in the left wing political circles. Right wingers do not think in the same way as left wingers and usually act in a more intelligent way. Right wingers tend to believe in the rule of law, so it is difficult to understand why a left winger would hold onto smashed computer hard drives. In a similar way, left wingers, such as Donald Trump, have difficulty understanding or explaining right wingers; in fact, Trump makes it sound as though conservatives are the ecological ones who want to conserve the planet. He probably does want to conserve the planet, so identifies himself as conservative.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3dCQKdxk0s (2-minutes, Trump can’t explain conservatism)

    Voting for the left wing Clinton rather than the left wing Trump does not necessarily make you any more left-wing than the left wingers who voted for Trump, so your example is not particularly convincing. From this side of the center, both candidates looked alike, and we have similar results. Clinton is still at large, unpunished, and as noted, many other criminal Democrats also go unindicted; Obamacare is still in full effect, and will likely remain so; there is no wall or prospect of a wall; and sanctuary cities are still encouraging people to risk their lives in the back of trucks in order to make it to one of those cities.

    This past election, we really had a no-win “Kobayashi Maru” test. No matter how we voted, we would lose. Trump promised that we conservatives would win so much that we would get tired of all the winning. I am waiting for that winning streak to start.

  • wayne

    It Feels Good to Be a Clinton
    https://youtu.be/FECIYlo3KRY
    (0:58)

  • Cotour

    Mike: I reread the Wasserman Schults / Aran story about the Marine who rented his house and became suspicious when he found a bunch of drives, lap tops and other technical equipment and turned them over to the FBI. The story is fairly straight forward. This quote by the Marine is the money quote:

    ““He’s dangerous. This is a crime syndicate that has successfully infiltrated Congress.

    I served in the Marine Corps for 14 years; if I downloaded files to an offsite server, I’m going to prison for a lot of years.” And the veteran, who’s an apparent Democrat, according to The DC, said the coverage of this case shows a double standard:

    “If Donald Trump and the Republicans had hired foreign nationals to be their top IT guys and somehow their congressional files had been compromised, this would have been all over the news.””

    Are you soooo stereo typical and intellectually dishonest a Democrat that you are truly unable to understand the implications of this very, very much verified situation? Are you serious? This does not get any worse for Wasserman Schultz, the guy she hired who apparently is a full blood spy for the Iranians, the DNC and the Hillary operation.

    This story is the first string to be grabbed onto firmly and followed, and it must be followed all the way to its reasonable and just conclusion. The political sphere where law and rules are more flexible and mutable that protected all of these individuals is not a permanent structure. The winds of power change in unexpected ways (D.J.Trump) and those winds blow ill for the members of the Democrat leadership who are without a doubt intellectually dishonest to their core because if they were to be honest the people would become so outraged at their culture of lies and deceit and criminal activity those winds of change would blow them straight to hell, where they belong.

    Thinking about this story and your sarcasm, I am embarrassed for you.

  • wayne

    Cotour-
    Good stuff.

    Imran Aran has initially been charged [“placeholder charges” to get him in custody] with multiple counts of mortgage fraud. He & his entire extended family obtained a series of jumbo loans by which he built his cash-only rental-empire, and issued by a bank with dubious connections to a variety of other democrat operative’s, regulator’s, and owners.
    Indictment’s related to money laundering and wire-fraud, (and hopefully espionage) are pending. Those indictment’s have not been unsealed.

    Mike–
    Not sure what I said to trigger you. Nor do I really care, truth be told.

    I have no clue why democrats attempt to destroy hard-drives/cell-phones, keep servers in their guest homes, nor why the entire executive branch under Obama, all used Gmail accounts for 8 years, to avoid Federal record-keeping requirements.

  • wayne

    Arrested Dem IT staffer’s attorney is major Clinton ally Chris Gowen .”
    https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/arrested-dem-it-staffers-attorney-is-major-clinton-ally

    “Gowen labeled Awan’s arrest as part of “a right-wing media-driven prosecution by a United States Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute people for working while Muslim.”

  • wayne

    Jeez– he’s already free-as-a-bird. (I wonder how long it takes him to hack into his gps bracelet & flee back to Pakistan?)

    “Awan, 37, of Virginia, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to one count of bank fraud during his arraignment in federal court in Washington, D.C. He was released but will have to wear a GPS monitor and abide by a curfew.”

  • Frank

    In no way do I support the DWS, and the events and players in the story sound very suspicious to me, but I would be careful to make judgment on the smashed drives. I think it would be prudent for anyone dealing with LEGITIMATE yet sensitive, financial, personal and/or government material, particularly coming from members of Congress, insure that it does not get into the hands of the wrong people. One of the most expedient ways to deal with small HHDs is to render them useless and make the data unrecoverable.

    Given the circumstances I hope this mess is investigated and anything illegal or wrongdoing is discovered and, if so, those responsible are brought to justice.

  • wayne

    What is with the focus on hard drives?

    This dude is allegedly guilty of all sorts of crimes, none of which involve breaking hard-drives.
    He was a government I.T. worker on a Congressional staff with a Congressional clearance, doing whatever Debbie told him to do. Now he has an expensive Clinton Lawyer pleading his case. Amazing.
    He & his entire family were all Federal Employee’s, and most all have fled back to Pakistan, including the woman with $12K in cash on her person. Feds confiscated the money at the airport, but allowed her to leave the Country.
    They already have procedures in place for disposing of old government hardware, none of which includes removing said government owned hardware, to one’s home, or rental property’s.
    (The IRS in contrast, went on a wholesale destruction binge on equipment that was under subpoena. Nobody cared, nobody went to jail, everyone kept their pension’s, nothing to see here, move along.)

    Am I the only one here, who has taken apart a hard drive to see how it worked?
    -It’s not an easy task to dismantle them, and you can’t break them open with a hammer or a sledge. Just try to “smash one open.”
    The data is written on the spindle which is the key part, and that is difficult to get at. Denting the case, doesn’t do anything.

    (Personally, for my old equipment– I extract the CPU from the circuit board for my collection, the hard drive goes into the trash & is land filled. Remaining carcass is set on the curb and collected by a local metal scrounger guy.)

  • mike shupp

    Cotour: You embarrass over easily!

    The original story as presented here and elsewhere was that Democratic Party staffers had A) wiped and trashed these hard drives and B) held onto them as they would affectionate children. It seemed implausible. The current narrative is that the trashed drives wound up in the hands of one guy who stashed them with other electronics gear in his garage and then, basically, treated them as trash. Which makes some sense — I’ve lived in places which discouraged dumping electronics in landfills as an ordinary thing and made it necessary to go out of one’s way to dispose of such.

    So that’s a plausible answer and I needn’t be sarcastic about conservatives dreaming up plots about absurd liberal behavior. Which is kind of a relief — I’m still a registered Republican voter, after all. . I’m sort of curious, I do admit, as to just what was on those disks that caused people to justify trashing them in the first place, but that’s a different issue.

  • Cotour

    Funny, I am a reasonable Republican / Conservative / Tea Party / Trump supporting human and vote that way and am, through no efforts of my own, a registered Democrat in NYC. (When they tell you that there are no manipulations of the voting rolls do not believe them. Living in NYC I strategically decided to leave it that way. I know several registered Democrats who would never and did never vote for Hillary, ever. Never vote for anyone who tells you themselves that they should be the next president because they are a particular gender or because its “their turn”. EVER.)

    At least your curious about the information on those devices. I think the reasonable assumption based on who owned them (The DNC / Wasserman) and who had them (Aran) and the stress this situation is causing that their contents is evidence of 1. Wrong doing / illegal activity by the DNC, Wasserman and Hillary and 2. Indications that this Aran and his family who were paid some $5 million to manage many Democrat Congress persons internet systems that contained secure information may in fact be an Iranian spy operation. Thats what it looks like.

    As to my embarrassment level, in general I do not embarrass easily but your efforts focused on some how making good this particular story and your apparent inability to properly interpret it, and then you tell me you supported Hillary that is being intellectually dishonest and thats embarrassing to me. I felt sorry for you and your unsustainable and intellectually dishonest position :( ::::::: (My sad face is crying for you)

    PS: You can troll me all day long, I do not mind it (It upsets Gary very much though) Why? (This is a secret of internet communications) Because if I choose to answer I answer in a serious and focused manner based in facts, and that is Krytonite to all trolling. And if I troll you I expect the same, a serious, focused answer based in facts. Few have the discipline to do so though, mainly because their argument is usually based in emotion and their point is usually baseless.

  • wayne

    Cotour–
    (har… I like the sad-face crying symbol-thing. I don’t use emoticons but I will utilize that.)
    (tangentially– when is your Mayor up for re-election??)

    Referencing federal computer hardware— to the extent akmed was employed as a Congressional staffer, 100% of that hardware is owned by the Federal government, taking any of it home, broken or otherwise, is a crime unto itself no matter what is contained therein.
    (And as a Staffer, he’s exempt from Obamacare, just another stick poking in my cage.)
    Unless you’re Hillary, then you can have a server in your guest home filled with all sorts of stuff. And if you are the Obama administration, everyone used Gmail to avoid creating a trail of their extensive crimes against the people. You or I go to prison for 20 years, she gets a book deal, and Mike’s Vote in 2020.)

    DNC computer shenanigan’s, are a whole other (potential) set of crimes. Podesta was so stupid, his password was “password.” (He needs to be wrapped in crime tape and thrown in the Potomac River.)

    And referencing wire-fraud statutes briefly, it’s a crime unto itself to utilize any common-carriers (or the Post Office) for purposes of furthering any criminal act whatsoever.

    Hillary is a(n) (alleged) criminal.
    B.J. Clinton is a convicted liar and his extra-special friend is that Jeffrey Epstein dude, who likes 14 year old girls.
    Chelsea’s biological father is Web Hubble.
    Huma is Hillary’s ‘extra-special’ girlfriend.
    Huma and her entire family are Muslin Brotherhood, up to their eyeballs. Render them all to a 3rd world country for “special treatment.”
    and while I’m at it:
    John McCain– Progressive RINO Statist America-hater, (Keating 5, anyone?) an existential danger to the Country. Don’t care one micron how many times he was hit in the head in a prison camp in Vietnam, not enough apparently, he should have done us all a favor and died then. Dissembling, clinically brain-damaged, Statist.

  • ken anthony

    Rule of law could actually fix some things. All we have to do is get rid of 99% of those on the government payroll.

    The corruption is beyond our ability to imagine.

    I wonder how much worse it will get?

  • Edward

    wayne asked: “What is with the focus on hard drives?

    Trying to make sure that everyone knows that there really is something to see, here. It is the corruption of the Democratic Party and its leaders.

    There are legitimate ways to dispose of hard drives with sensitive, secret, top secret, or Special Access Program information on them. Using a hammer is a way to bypass the official disposal methods, signifying that they have something illegal to hide.

    wayne wrote: “John McCain– Progressive RINO Statist America-hater, …

    Geez, wayne, don’t hold anything back. Tell us how you really feel.

    ken anthony wrote: “All we have to do is get rid of 99% of those on the government payroll.

    That may be a little too much. We still need a strong military, and they are part of the payroll.

  • ken anthony

    I wasn’t thinking about the military. Thanks for the correction.

  • Nail them up…… why is schultz still working and not locked up….

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