Free Republic

Days before U.S. Capitol Police told House members that three Pakistani brothers who ran their computer networks may have stolen congressional data, their stepmother called Fairfax County, Virginia police to say the Democratic staffers were keeping her from her husband’s deathbed. A relative described her situation as being held in captivity for months while the brothers schemed to take their father’s life insurance and other assets. The brothers — who as IT professionals for Congress could read House members’ emails — allegedly used wiretapping devices on their own stepmother and threatened to abduct loved ones in Pakistan if she didn’t...

Multiple reports have detailed the equipment and nearly $6 million a Pakistani family of IT specialists allegedly took from the U.S. government while running computer networks for numerous congressional Democrats. But that’s only money and equipment, says a U.S. congressman who contends that the biggest problem is the classified information to which the Awan family had access. The taxpayers’ dollars confiscated from Congress is “not the highest of our concerns,” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, told WND in an interview about the case of IT staffer Imran Awan, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and their wives Natalia Sova and Hina Alvi.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has requested copies of immigration files for the six Pakistani suspects in the House IT scandal, who allegedly stole equipment from Congress and accessed computers without permission.

A former congressional information technology (IT) aide allegedly threatened to have his stepmother’s Pakistani relatives kidnapped if she talked to U.S. law enforcement authorities, according to court documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group. “Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan,” Awan’s stepmother, Samina Gilani, claimed in the documents filed April 14 in Fairfax County, Va., in the case of Americo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company v. Abid A. Awan and Samina Ashraf Gilani. Imran Awan...

Four people who worked for the House of Representatives have a history of massive debts and bankruptcy, a fondness for fast cars and real estate, and unusually complicated webs of intertwined finances. The three brothers and a wife of one of them are under criminal investigation into sensitive congressional information security. Chiefs of staff for dozens of Democratic lawmakers who employed the four were informed last week that a criminal probe was underway into their use of congressional information technology systems, including the existence of an external server to which House data was being funneled, and into the theft of...

Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission.Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues and documents, including...