Awan and his family cabal of fraudsters had access for years to the e-mails and other electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. It turns out they were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks.ADDED: Here's how the NYT is covering it: "Trump Fuels Intrigue Surrounding a Former I.T. Worker’s Arrest." Trump! This is a story about Trump?!
They were fired in February. All except Awan, that is. He continued in the employ of Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat, former DNC chairwoman, and Clinton crony. She kept him in place at the United States Congress right up until he was nabbed at the airport on Monday....
Congressional-staff salaries are modest, in the $40,000 range. For some reason, Awan was paid about four times as much. He also managed to get his wife, Alvi, on the House payroll . . . then his brother, Abid Awan . . . then Abid’s wife, Natalia Sova. The youngest of the clan, Awan’s brother Jamal, came on board in 2014 — the then-20-year-old commanding an annual salary of $160,000....
Why were they paid so much for doing so little? Intriguing as it is, that’s a side issue....
To hear some commentators tell it, with the help of his family and a cushy job on Capitol Hill, Mr. Awan, a Pakistani-American, had managed to steal computer hardware, congressional data and even — just maybe — a trove of internal Democratic National Committee emails that eventually surfaced last summer on WikiLeaks. It helped that the story seems to involve, if only tangentially, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman who is the former chairwoman of the committee and an ally of Hillary Clinton’s.AND: I left out my favorite line from the NYT article:
The Daily Caller, with almost two dozen articles on the family, has led the pack in reporting the story, packaging new details that have dribbled out of the investigation into a growing web of material, even as few in the mainstream news media paid attention.
That is until Monday, when Mr. Awan was arrested by the F.B.I. and United States Capitol Police on seemingly unrelated charges as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan. In the days since, the story has raced down an increasingly familiar track at warp speed, from the fringes of the internet to Fox News and other established publications....
Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for the Democratic committee, called the suggestion “laughable.”Does Hinojosa have any idea that she's heightening our suspicion of the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community?
“He was never employed by the D.N.C.,” she said. “The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia was behind the D.N.C. hack.”
Don't think about that! It would be ridiculous to question the Russian story they got everyone to sign onto.
ALSO: For months, we've been encouraged to imagine a big conspiracy involving Trump and the Russians. Why wouldn't that make ordinary people sensitive to suggestions of other conspiracies? It requires strong partisanship to keep conspiracy thinking going only in one direction, but plenty of us are distanced from both parties. We may have free-flowing suspicion. If there are conspiracies, are there not layers and layers before you get to the truth? That's what's so funny about the Hinojosa quote. Pointing at a closed door and saying that door has been closed works as an enticement to open that very door.
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244 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 244 of 244Re: access to Congress (why just Congress?) by billionaires -
That WAS the old normal you know.
Thats why the Democratic party system was and still is a top-bottom coalition against the middle, and was largely driven by the requirements of said billionaires. And those that werent Democratic supporters were anti-Trump anyway. The billionaires of America, and for that matter, of Europe, were all for the pre-Trump status quo.
This little fact never seems to get through.
TTR
Lifelong Democrat Donald Trump switched party affiliations at least five different times.
"Policies that don't gut Medicare/Medicaid, "
Obama raided Medicare to the tune of 720 billion dollars in order to fund Obamacare....
http://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/obamacares-impact-seniors-update
Reality us right-wing.
Why was Debby Ding Dong paying the dude six months after the rest of the family was fired? Why was she planning to keep on paying him once he had absconded to Pakistan?
Reasonably suspicious minds might conclude there was some kind of payoff or hush money involved? Did he have pictures of Debby in carnal congress with Vladimir Putin? I dunno--think it's time for a special counsel here.
Brookzene,
The system has been very sick for decades.
But the reality was deliberately obscured and denied.
It helps when the press apparatus that has the resources to dig up information does not, and deliberately so.
But now the scab has been ripped off the infected wound, and it hurts.
All this hostility is, in large part, a refusal to recognize reality, a wish for the mask of fantasy to return, "normality".
Trump is almost alone with the Administrative State his enemy.
The fighting generals and the state officials he has chosen are pretty much immune to the Deep State.
He does need to clean out most of the Obama bureaucracy, even if it leaves a thousand offices vacant,
Shipping EPA to Detroit might be of value Pour Encourager Les Autres
We always knew it would be like this. "Chaos " is the desired term of his enemies, including those here,
BREAKING NEWS: This thread isn't about Trump, bint.
See Debbies threats to the Capitol Police regarding their snatching of her laptop.
She's a cretin.
Literally every decision made in writing this article was political. Every word, every frame, every minimization, every thought including the most obvious: their refusal to detail the suspicious evidence. In fact the Fandos identifies the source if the problem but frames it as minimizing by omitting the follow up question:
The work, Mr. Gowen and congressional staff members said, was mostly run of the mill: setting up new phones and computers, fixing printers, helping aides and members reset passwords.
How does this run of the mill service justify 160k per year for two people plus high salaries for two more?
The NYT has abandoned the pretense they are anything other than a partisan defense organization.
Yes, everyone on the panel agrees, virtually everyone in the country agrees including a lot of Trump supporters, Trump badly needs more discipline.
None of them said that's why Trump brought Kelly in, however. Nor do your quotes indicate them saying that.
I disagree. Kelly bringing discipline personally to Trump certainly was one of memes the panel discussed and I believe my quotes back that analysis up.
Other memes were peddled, one being that Trump brought Kelly in to bring order to the “chaos” in the Whitehouse. Not quite so idiotic but still wrong in my opinion. It’s understood, or should be if it isn’t, that no one can actually know why Trump moved Kelly in – none of us are mind-readers.
But the idea that Trump brought Kelly in to dial back Trump’s own undisciplined ways is a meme that deserves ridicule – that’s why I singled it out.
If Trump continues to be this undisciplined and chaotic then he probably won't win a single primary and stands almost no chance of being the Republican nominee in 2016. ;-)
Michael K suggests: He does need to clean out most of the Obama bureaucracy, even if it leaves a thousand offices vacant,
'..a thousand offices vacant'? Hell, yes! Most of them should remain vacant.
I misread that as a billion and thought that was too many government jobs to leave empty. Let's compromise at 15 million.
Leviathan needs fewer tentacles.
Well, of COURSE it's about Trump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111!!!! It's the NYT, can NOT POSSIBLY be about a Democrat. Not allowed, doncha know.
People who watch government all of the time are confused by Trump. People who work and manage or are executives in the private sector are not.
Exactly. It’s why the stock market doesn’t seem to pay much attention to intrigue in high places. Why should they? They’ve all seen exactly the same thing in corporate boardrooms. It’s so ordinary that it’s cliché.
Mooch was profane but he was also right, wasn’t he? Mr. eGOP is gone. The MSM needs anti-Trump stories so they act like an alpha going off on the competition(Mooch vs Priebus and Bannon) is unusual and ominous. The stock market people see this and yawn.
Fabi said...
If Trump continues to be this undisciplined and chaotic then he probably won't win a single primary and stands almost no chance of being the Republican nominee in 2016. ;-)
Truer words were never spoken.
chaos. chaotic. The lefties have the new word of the month. What happened to collusion their formerly overused word?
The way to drain the swamp is to remove the offices of the swamp people to places where the normals live, preferably no less than a three hour drive from a Palm Restaurant. Plenty of empty office space out in the hinderlands.
It is certainly going to be chaotic when they start indicting democrats.
I think Trump may let them go to jail too after the way they have acted.
You know what often is, but always appears chaotic and undisciplined? Changing an ossified, entrenched, elitist club of corruptocrats that likes it's ill gotten position which it has designed to be totally unaffected by it's own failure. If you think this would happen without chaos, both real and manufactured, then you have no idea how much they love what they have become. If this chaos does not continue for a while, then Trump's chances of reelection are even worse than if it settles down. It will never be allowed to find its footing as long as the media is keeping the score and not until the crying and gnashing of teeth has run it's course and the reformers are left standing over the rubble will we see what it offers. Nothing will disappoint Americans more than Trump not changing much after four years. Does anybody really want this crapfest of top-down corruption, scandal, and tyranny to just fester as it has now for a decade - The lying decade. Bring the chaos to Washington. As someone said above, the independent parts of the private sector have no problem with this kind of competition and chaos. It always leads to improvement, as nothing is worse than stagnation in business.
There is nothing wrong with being a mature, older member of the village, but if you are near 80 and have done the same thing most of your adult life and somehow got rich "serving the people" in politics all that time, then you need to meet Mr. Chaos.
It's an interesting experience to listen to the Lyndon Johnson biography, volume II, while watching what is going on in Washington now.
Those days were primitive in the nature and extent of corruption but Johnson was learning.
We are way past 1942 in the culture of corruption. Johnson became an expert at it and sewed the seeds of what it has become.
Without "The Great Society" I doubt we could have gotten as deep in the mess as we have. The Administrative State would not had much to administer without Medicaid and Medicare and the "War on Poverty" to destroy the black family and give us the violent inner cities and Black Lives Matter.
Trump should be humming "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."
I would not blame him if he said "Fuck It!" and went home the way the Democrats and the RINO Republicans have treated him.
The Pakistanis have probably been feeding the Taliban all the plans the way the left fed the NVA the plans in Vietnam.
Democrats both times.
Nixon is to blame too, Michael K.
Nixon is to blame for the EPA and Affirmative Action.
I grant that but both were probably done with goodwill.
Both have gone beyond sane policies. We now have blacks demanding segregation.
Bull Conner would be proud.
Great points bagoh20! If you're not taking flak, you're not over the target.
Nixon was a big government Republican. He was George W. Bush and compassionate conservatism plus price controls.
Plus the 1974 Budget Reconciliation Act left us with baseline budgeting that guarantees increased spending and debt. Leaving the gold standard made that inevitable (even if one does not like the gold standard, one needs to be prepared for what Democrats will do given an opportunity to increase spending and borrowing).
Nixon was a big government Republican
By today's standards he was a Progressive. I often say that neither JFK nor Nixon could win their party's nomination today.
I certainly don't understand why the Left would have a beef with Nixon today.
It seemed like odd behavior, for a Republican to protect a Democrat in what looked to be fraud
There are actually separation of powers issues here. The issue is can the Executive Branch intrude upon the Legislative Branch in this manner. It is easy to see how this could be abused. The commonsense answer would be to have the Speaker, majority leader and minority leader, or the vice president and minority and majority leaders, get together to approve or challenge the intrusion.
Trump is almost alone with the Administrative State his enemy.
Not only that, he is also facing The Mummy, Godzilla, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Xenomorph XX121, orcs, Sauron, goblins, ghouls and many other imaginary/invented enemies.
If he didn't want to head the government, he didn't have to run for president. People don't get to destroy the country by attaining leadership positions within it - no matter how many hostile enterprises (in this case, the Russian Mafia and Government) support them in the process. Whether he wanted a hostile takeover of the government or a silent infection of it, a coup or a capture - the answer is the same. You don't do it by becoming president. You become a lobbyist, and pay off as many legislators as you can to destroy the U.S. government by selling it out and legislating its dismantling - piece by piece. Bit by bit. Slowly but surely - the way Republicans have been doing it for decades. The presidency is not is not the head of a company you can buy out through a singular act of hostile takeover. Until the Constitution's changed, if they want the job, they're going to have to actually do it and put their other hostile intentions toward its administration on hold.
Dummy.
Master of the non sequitur says what?
I sure hope I didn't leave out additional enemies of yours. Feel free to add them to the list.
Look for the government under your bed. It's coming after you! Spooky!
One, they arent inventions, those orcs and mummies.
There are even (many) allied Sarumans with their towers and their own orcs, and kingdoms of the Easterlings, and Mumakil (often white), and even corsairs of Umbar. Tolkien knew what he was allegorizing (is that a word? It shouldn't be, its terrible). Or if he meant something else, it suits anyway.
If you are in the right lines of work you will have met a good variety thereof. And moreso, the sinister emanations of Mordor, its clouds and shadows that weaken men and steal their courage.
Two, a government is not, usually, a country. Countries usually have governments, but the nature of one does not necessarily define the other. There are governments that are countries, of course, but thats a recipe for trouble.
Three, a bureaucratic system is a tool of government, it should not be a goal of government. Throwing out defective tools is a proper exercise of governments (the tools, of course, dont see it that way).
Four, the USG has in no way been dismantled, ever. The regulatory burden and its intrusions on the private sector (the emanations of Mordor) have increased every year without fail, and this is actually objectively measurable (though incompletely). How one can imagine any dismantling is a mysterious but common delusion.
I think I added a few. You are welcome.
Ah, wait, I missed the Mouth of Sauron. He only had one, which was I think a terrible oversight on the part of the Dark Power. The modern instance has remedied this in superfluity.
Plus the 1974 Budget Reconciliation Act left us with baseline budgeting that guarantees increased spending and debt.
If I remember correctly, that was Democrats reacting to Nixon's sequestrations of spending bills passed by Democrats. His administrations would not spend money even though appropriated. The Democrats got that law passed to force more spending.
And Nixon had weakened himself so that he could not resist.
buwaya
...and they danced far better (Louis had a big hand in the invention of ballet, and was quite a dancer himself, playing Apollo in numerous Lully ballets).
See The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power (buy it thru the Althouse Amazon portal, it's a great book and you appear to have the historical perspective to appreciate it.
But the French aristocrats smelled bad (unwashed and heavily perfumed), and were wont to die of horrible infectious diseases.
I'm Myrt!
Being...not so young, I also forgot Wormtongue, of which again this Age shows a superfluity. Tolkien wrote types, to have created hordes of everything, as in reality, would have been been tedious.
I wouldnt call these monsters, exactly, being not-inhuman in a technical sense at least.
Many are to be found in many publications, such as NRO, often the WSJ, and the Economist.
Young Hegelian
Wow, that's really taking one for your country to fuck DWS!
Way beyond 007 in Thunderball or You Only Live Twice:
"...the things I do for England"
buwaya
The Black Tongue and Orcish are modeled after Turkish.
Need I say more?
"This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. The theory was summarized by Edward Lorenz as:[7]
Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future."
Which pretty much describes "Life, the Universe and Everything".
“He was never employed by the D.N.C.,” she said. “The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia was behind the D.N.C. hack.”
So the fact that he was employed by the HEAD of the DNC, and had access to (and sometimes custody of) all her devices is clearly irrelevant.
Has anybody given any reasonable hypothesis for how this I.T. situation is no big deal? If I transfer $10k domestically I get flak. How did this guy's wife transfer $280k without interference?
Putting on my contrarian hat I have a hard time seeing this as an innocent situation.I
Anybody?
I bet Daily Caller didn't know until now that it's on the "fringes of the Internet."
You know what I don't get? I don't get how come the NY Times doesn't know what a joke it's become.
I've been waiting for shoes to start dropping for some time now. I suspect there are a lot of shoes. The Daily Caller reporter who's been dogging this story told Mark Steyn the other day he thinks there might be a kickback scheme involved.
Wait a minute wait a minute. Not so fast. There's a line here.
First and foremost, bring us the head of Lois Lerner.
[Rhetorically speaking, of course.]
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