Advertisement – story continues below
Last week, the Washington Examiner reported that a former Democrat staffer who fled the country to Pakistan after being accused of fraud has struck a deal with authorities to return to the U.S. and face charges. Following the report, Rep. Trent Franks suggested that her stunning decision to return might portend very badly for Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
To understand why, one must first understand former IT aide Hina Alvi’s connection to Wasserman Schultz. In 2004, the Democrat representative hired Alvi’s husband, Imran Awan, to work for her. Over time, many of his friends and family members, including Alvi, wound up also earning positions as aides and staffers for other Capitol Hill Democrats.
Fast forward to February of this year, when reports emerged that Awan, Alvi and their friends and family were under investigation for “stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network, according to multiple sources briefed on the investigation,” Politico reported.
Advertisement – story continues below
A month later, Alvi fled the country. Two months after that, authorities arrested her husband as he too tried to leave, but on an entirely separate set of charges. It turned out that both Alvi and Awan were also suspected of bank fraud.
This brings us to Franks, the Texas Republican, who predicted during a discussion with Fox Business host Lou Dobbs last week that the only reason Alvi would have agreed to return is because she’s working on a broader immunity deal in return for damaging information on Wasserman Schultz.
That would mean major problems for the Democrat Party, considering Wasserman Schultz was the party’s chairwoman until being forced out last summer in the scandal over rigging the primary contest for Hillary Clinton.
Advertisement – story continues below
“I don’t want to talk out of school here, but I think you’re going to see some revelations that are going to be pretty profound,” Franks said. “The fact that this wife is coming back from Pakistan and is willing to face charges, as it were, I think there is a good chance she is going to reach some type of immunity to tell a larger story here that is going to be pretty disturbing to the American people.”
“I would just predict that this is going to be a very significant story and people should fasten their seat belts on this one,” he added.
Listen:
VIDEO
Advertisement – story continues below
Wasserman Schultz’s odd behavior over the past couple of months certainly suggests she’s been desperate to keep Alvi and Awan loyal to her to keep them from revealing something to the authorities that could incriminate her.
But there have been indications that Awan is ready to cooperate with authorities, if he’s not already cooperating. The Daily Caller reported last week that a laptop computer found in a former phone booth in the House Rayburn Building in April may have been planted for police to find by Awan himself.
Along with the computer, according to The Daily Caller, were “a Pakistani ID card, copies of Awan’s driver’s license and congressional ID badge, and letters to the U.S. attorney. Police also found notes in a composition notebook marked ‘attorney-client privilege.’”
The laptop also had the username “RepDWS,” according to The Daily Caller.
Wasserman Schultz tried to get the laptop back from the Capitol Police, even warning during a televised hearing in May that there would be “consequences” for the police for continuing to hold onto equipment that belonged to the office of a House member who was not under any investigation. Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa refused, however, noting that the laptop was linked to a criminal suspect — Awan.
As The Daily Caller pointed out, Awan might have wanted the laptop in police hands the whole time:
“The circumstances of the laptop’s appearance described in the police report suggest Wasserman Schultz was trying to keep the police from reviewing a laptop that Awan himself may have wanted them to find,” The Daily Caller reported. “The former phone booth room where police found the items is small, and there was no obvious reason to enter it.”
If the laptop were indeed deliberately planted by Awan so authorities would find it, it could well mean he intends to cooperate in an investigation that could implicate Wasserman Schultz. And the fact that his wife, Alvi, has chosen to return to the United States despite legal danger suggests she may be on the verge of exposing Wasserman Schultz’ secrets in exchange for an immunity deal.
The Trump adminsitration could have sought to extradite her, of course. Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf wrote in his book “In the Line of Fire” that the country extradited 369 terror suspects to the United States after 9/11, though human rights activists claimed that many of those people were innocent and essentially sold to the U.S. by a cynical Pakistani government, according to CBS.
However, Pakistan can make an extradition difficult. The Islamabad High Court, for example, recently barred the extradition of a bombing suspect to the United States, where the man’s father claimed the suspect would be subject to the Trump administration’s “biased and prejudiced policy toward Muslims,” according to the Associated Press.
So, Alvi is coming back for a reason, and chances are she got a deal to do it. And with all of that, anything’s possible. One thing is certain, though, there’s a major crisis looming for the Democrat Party on Capitol Hill over this case, and even the arrest or other legal trouble for Rep. Wasserman Schultz is possible.
Nothing else makes sense. Why on earth would Alvi leave the comfort of her home in Pakistan to return to a country that could very well be seeking to toss her into prison?
H/T Zero Hedge
Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about Rep. Trent Franks’ theory.
