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Anonymous ID: 3dec39 June 24, 2018, 6:11 p.m. No.1893244   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3260 >>3263 >>3290 >>3565 >>3598 >>3682

>>1893157

A top aide to Democrat Rep. Yvette Clarke told Capitol Hill investigators she believed the New York congresswoman’s chief of staff was working with Abid Awan to steal equipment from the congressional office.

Clarke “wrote off” one-tenth of her annual budget after $120,000 in equipment could not be located.

She did not mention it publicly and waited to fire Abid until House officials approached her about it months later. Davis no longer works there, but has not been arrested.

Rep. Yvette Clarke’s deputy chief of staff came into the office on a Saturday in December 2015 and caught the New York Democrat’s part-time IT aide, Abid Awan, rummaging through the congresswoman’s work area with new iPods and other equipment strewn around the room, according to a House document and interviews with Hill staff.

 

Wendy Anderson told Abid to get out of the office, the document said. She told Capitol Hill investigators that she soon suspected Clarke’s chief of staff, Shelley Davis, was working with Abid on a theft scheme, multiple House staffers with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Caller News Foundation. They also said that Anderson pushed for Abid’s firing.

 

But Clarke did not fire Abid until six months after the congresswoman formally acknowledged that $120,000 in equipment was missing, records show — not until after House investigators independently announced a review that would potentially catch financial discrepancies. Even then, Anderson told investigators she believed another top staffer in Clarke’s office was subverting their efforts, a House staffer with knowledge of the investigation said.

 

Four months later, Anderson took a job with another congressional office. Clarke’s office declined to say under what terms she left.

 

 

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Abid — known in the office as Omar — and his brothers, fellow IT workers Imran Awan and Jamal Awan, are suspected of making “unauthorized access” to congressional servers during the 2016 election and of running a theft scheme, according to the House Inspector General (IG). Together, the family had access to all the emails and files of 1 in 5 House Democrats.

 

Members like Clarke have refused to discuss the case. The New York congresswoman, meanwhile, has described Donald Trump’s presidency as the product of an “illegally hacked, illegitimate election.”

 

House Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko testified in a public hearing in April that “the House IG discovered evidence of procurement fraud and irregularities [and] numerous violations of House security policies” by the Awans. The alleged procurement fraud included submitting suspicious invoices to bill equipment to House offices.

 

Each invoice requires sign-offs from chiefs of staff or congressmen. House office budgets are tight enough that unnecessary purchases would be hard to miss, three chiefs of staff told TheDCNF.

 

A Feb. 3, 2017 letter from Kiko and the House’s top law enforcement officer, Sergeant-At-Arms Paul Irving, to the Committee on House Administration — kept secret by the House, but obtained by TheDCNF — quotes from notes on an interview with Anderson:

 

Coming in on a Saturday and finding Omar in the office with equipment everywhere. She stated, ‘it looked like Christmas with Apple TV’s, iPods, etc. scattered around the room.’ She stated that Omar told her ‘these items were not her office’s equipment but they belonged to another office.’ She told him to get them out of her member’s office.

 

One House staffer who said Anderson confided in them told TheDCNF of the views she expressed: “She knew it was obviously stolen … What business case would they have had for iPods? … He’s a shared employee, basically a contractor. Why would he be camped out … in her personal office?”

 

“Wendy was actually a truth-sayer, she wanted the right things to happen, enforce rules, and Yvette Clarke did not,” the staffer continued.

 

Anderson was promoted to chief of staff soon after she encountered Abid in Clarke’s office near Christmas 2015. Her predecessor, Davis, departed the payroll on Feb. 11, 2016.

 

Once Anderson became responsible for the office’s finances, she found that Clarke’s office had for years been ordering abnormal quantities of equipment, much with seemingly dubious business value, she later told House investigators, according to multiple congressional officials with knowledge of the probe who spoke with TheDCNF.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/24/clare-cos-exposed-awan-theft-allegations/