James S. Robbins

Opinion columnist

If a Russian-born IT specialist with longstanding ties to former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus was arrested by the FBI trying to board a flight to Moscow after wiring hundreds of thousands of dollars abroad on a false pretense while leaving a trail of destroyed hard drives in his wake, it would be the subject of banner headlines and 24/7 speculation on cable TV.

Instead we have the case of Imran Awan, a Pakistani IT specialist hired by then-Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman Shultz, picked up by the Feds under similar circumstances to a collective yawn from the mainstream press. Awan’s defense attorney, Clinton-connected Chris Gowan, blames the whole thing on Islamophobia. Wasserman Shultz’s office also played the bias card, saying the investigation raises “troubling concerns about … potential ethnic and religious profiling.” Others aver that making anything more of this case than bank fraud is an exercise in fake news.

True, there is a strong tendency these days to pass off rank speculation as fact, such as when Hillary Clinton made the evidence-free claim that 1,000 Russian agents had been working in the U.S. to bring about her political demise. So let’s stick to what we know.

We have an extremely highly-paid information technology technician and several of his family members working for many years with leading Congressional Democrats, including some on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They collectively pulled down millions of dollars since the early 2000s.

Awan’s main employer was the head of the DNC at the time of a major computer security breach. Awan and his family were involved in a series of sketchy financial transactions, and have been implicated in misuse of the data to which they had access, which includes personal emails and even the possibility of classified information. In February 2017, members of the Awan ring were named by House security services as suspects in a criminal investigation involving “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”

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At this time, Awan’s wife Alvi left the country carrying $12,400 in cash, after Imran wired $283,000 to Pakistan pretending to be Alvi. In the course of the criminal investigation, a laptop computer was discovered hidden in the Rayburn House Office Building along with other stolen IT equipment, and Wasserman Shultz personally threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” if it was examined.

If this is just a case about alleged financial crime, insurance fraud, no-show jobs, home loan violations, intimidation and the like, then fine. Let justice be done. But given the fact that Awan and his family were at the center of the Democratic IT world, you don’t have to be an Islamophobe or a fake news peddler to have some valid questions.

Don’t Democrats, who were Awan’s potential victims, want to know what happened? Couldn’t Awan be the source of the DNC data breach, either directly, or because someone — even Russians — stole information or passwords from him? Was classified information from the House Intelligence Committee compromised, sent overseas, or shared with a foreign intelligence service or terrorist group? Was Awan colluding with anyone outside his family?

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Why wouldn’t Wasserman Shultz, the most prominent victim of the DNC data breach, who lost her high-profile job because of it, want to get to the bottom of this? Why did she keep this sketchy individual on her payroll long after his pattern of suspicious behavior was evident? Why did she threaten unstated “consequences” for not returning a laptop Awan had hidden, instead of encouraging the criminal investigation?

There may be reasonable answers to all these questions that have nothing to do with the DNC data breach or supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election. Or this may be the story of the century that will exonerate the Trump campaign.

James S. Robbins, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, has taught at the National Defense University and the Marine Corps University and served as a special assistant in the office of the secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration. Follow him on Twitter: @James_Robbins

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