Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz defiantly stands by her decision to keep an information technology aide on her payroll for six months after he was banned from the House network and fired by other members of Congress.

“I believe that I did the right thing, and I would do it again,” Wasserman Schultz said Thursday in an exclusive interview with the Sun Sentinel. “There are times when you can’t be afraid to stand alone, and you have to stand up for what’s right.

“It would have been easier for me to just fire him,” she said.

The Weston Democrat did fire Imran Awan last week after he was arrested on bank fraud charges at an airport while trying to leave the country.

As the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Wasserman Schultz is the most prominent Democrat who employed Awan. Her decision to keep employing Awan has been under fire from her Democratic primary challenger, Republicans and multiple conservative websites. They’ve suggested Wasserman Schultz is hiding something and the Awan matter is much more serious than she’s letting on.

His arrest, the congresswoman said, had nothing to do with the months-long investigation of Awan as an IT worker for a variety of members of Congress. An FBI affidavit filed with the criminal complaint said Awan and his wife claimed a property used to secure a home equity line of credit was a “principal residence,” when it was, in fact, a rental property. Wasserman Schultz said there still hasn’t been any evidence presented that he’s done anything wrong involving his work for Congress.

And, she said, she believes he may have been put under scrutiny because of his religious faith. Awan is Muslim.

Awan, his wife and brothers worked for years for various members of Congress, including Wasserman Schultz. He was a so-called shared employee, with each office paying a part-time salary.

In February, Wasserman Schultz said, chiefs of staffs for members of Congress were told that Awan was under investigation and his access to the House network was suspended. House payroll records show that multiple members of Congress terminated Awan quickly, early in February.

Instead of firing him, Wasserman Schultz said her office worked with the House chief administration officer to develop a job description that “would allow him to continue to do work … until such time as there were other charges brought or we had some evidence that there was something that was produced that warranted further action.”

Even without access to the IT network, Wasserman Schultz said, “there are plenty of technological issues that an IT person can assist with. He didn’t have access to the network, but he was able to give us guidance and advice and troubleshoot on a wide variety of other technological issues.” IT isn’t limited to computer network issues, she said; it includes phones, printers, the website and helping people with software.

“I had grave concerns about his due process rights being violated,” she said. “When their investigation was reviewed with me, I was presented with no evidence of anything that they were being investigated for. And so that, in me, gave me great concern that his due process rights were being violated. That there were racial and ethnic profiling concerns that I had,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz said the chiefs of staff were told that Awan and his family members were having their access to the House IT network cut off because they were under investigation for “procurement violations and data transfer violations.” Wasserman Schultz said from what she has been able to discern the data transfer issue doesn’t involve anything sinister.

A law enforcement official familiar with the case said after Awan’s arrest there was no evidence of anything beyond the mortgage fraud for which he was charged and no indications of intelligence or national security implications. Because this is a pending case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington said it wouldn’t have any comment beyond the federal complaint.

Instead, Wasserman Schultz said, it involved “transferring data outside the secure network, which I think amounted to use of apps that the House didn’t find compliant with our security requirements.”

An example, she said, is the storage service Dropbox, which allows people to store documents and other images and share them with others. Wasserman Schultz said she believes other IT employees engage in the same kind of data movement as Awan but aren’t being investigated.

Wasserman Schultz said Awan didn’t have access to any classified information. She and other members of Congress aren’t allowed to store classified information in their offices and on their computers.

When they go to secure locations to receive classified information, the members of Congress aren’t allowed to bring in any kind of electronics — Wasserman Schultz even has to leave her Fitbit fitness tracker outside — and aren’t allowed to leave the room with any written notes.

In 2016, Awan was paid $20,000 by Wasserman Schultz. In 2017, he was paid about $7,800, from the beginning of the year until his July 25 termination. His salary rate didn’t change while his duties changed, spokesman David Damron said.

Wasserman Schultz said she hired Awan when she went to Congress in 2005, at the recommendation of then-U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Palm Beach County. She said he worked in various offices as needed.

Wasserman Schultz was also chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee from 2011 to 2016, resigning last summer after WikiLeaks published stolen internal party emails. She said Awan never worked for the DNC.

She said her concerns over the investigation were the reason she grilled Capitol Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa about a laptop computer at a May 18 House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.

She said the laptop in question was issued by her office to Awan. “He accidentally left it somewhere,” a loss Wasserman Schultz said was reported to the Capitol Police. When the Capitol Police recovered the laptop, the agency wanted to search its contents.