Lawyer For Imran Claims Dem Congressmen To Blame For Falsified Spending Records

It just got interesting…

DailyCaller: House Democrats ordered the systematic falsification of records showing how they spend their taxpayer-provided office budgets, according to lawyers for two former House information technology (IT) aides.

It’s a remarkable accusation that pits sitting lawmakers against the former aides, Imran Awan, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and his wife Hina Alvi. Imran was arrested in July while trying to board a flight to Pakistan, and then indicted on four counts of bank fraud involving moving money to that country. Imran and Hina, who was also indicted, face a court date Friday.

One of Imran’s lawyers, Aaron Page, acknowledged the invoicing discrepancy Aug. 21, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation, “This is just how things have been done for forever. This is what experienced members of Congress expect: to expedite things, they adjust the pricing.”

If members or senior staff instructed IT aides to misrepresent how budgets were spent, that could potentially explain why officials have not charged the Awans with crimes related to procurement, even a full year after House authorities gathered documentation showing invoices that claimed expensive technological items cost $499 instead of their true price: potentially an open-and-shut violation.

“The only reason you’re not seeing charges is because the Democrats who employed him are not cooperating,” a senior Republican congressional official with direct knowledge of the probe told TheDCNF last month.

He was initially surprised by seeming recalcitrant to enforce House rules, the official said, and eventually saw it as supporting the idea that members might fear that an investigation into rogue staffers could ultimately implicate members or senior staffers in procurement misconduct.

House-wide administrators take a periodic inventory of all equipment over $500, but items listed as less than that amount can more easily go missing. The difference in the price was made-up to the vendor, CDW Government, by wrongly inflating the cost of a “service plan.” The cost for the equipment’s service plans did not count toward triggering any internal tracking. Service plans are costs associated with support in case something breaks.

Some of the equipment was shipped to the Awans’ homes, and many pieces of equipment could not immediately be produced when investigators asked to see it, the senior congressional official told TheDCNF.

An allegedly lackadaisical approach is especially troublesome because procurement violations are not the only focus of the probe into the Awans. The Washington Post reported that investigators found the crew accessed a server 5,400 times without authorization and transferred “massive” data off of the House network. Democrats are potentially letting Imran get away with security breaches to keep the procurement issues from being looked into, the senior official told TheDCNF.

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