Darrell Castle reports on an espionage scandal involving information technology professionals working for several Democrat members of the U.S. Congress. Transcript / Notes THE IT SCANDAL IN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report.  Today is Friday August 11, 2017, and on today’s report I will be talking about another scandal in Congress – this one apparently limited solely to Democrat members of Congress and their employees.  I will admit that I struggled with what to call this report.  Should I call it the Awan scandal, the Democrat espionage scandal, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz scandal, but I wanted to be fair and not say anything untrue or at least explain that these things are still, hopefully, under investigation and therefore as yet unproven.  Some of the things in this report are so obvious that most people will have no trouble seeing that there is something very wrong in Congress, particularly on the Democrat side since this scandal is apparently limited exclusively to them. Another interesting thing about this scandal is that it is being reported almost exclusively by conservative web sites and news services.  Let’s take short look at what this scandal really is, and what brought it to this stage.  Starting with one person in about 2003 (but the whole family in 2009), several Democrat members of Congress, at least 49 but up to 80 of them, hired five members of a Pakistani family to do their IT or Information Technology work.  The leader of the decision to hire them was a member of Congress from Florida, and Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. These five Pakistanis were paid at least 4 million dollars, and possibly a lot more, for their services over that period.  The investigation into their activities started, it seems, about four months ago.  The conservative website The Daily Caller has been out front with reporting on this so I will quote the site for a summary, “Five members of a Pakistani family under criminal investigation for allegedly misusing their positions as computer administrators for dozens of Democrats in the House of Representatives were paid at least $4 million from July 2009 to the present…some of the dozens of House democrats—many  of whom serve on the intelligence, homeland security and foreign affairs committees—who employed the suspects were inexplicitly paying people they rarely or never saw.  The suspects had full access to the emails and office computer files of the members for whom they worked.” The names are Imran Awan, the leader, his brothers Amid, and Jawal, Imran’s wife Hina Alvi, Amid’s wife Nataliva Sova, who is probably Russian, plus Imran’s friend Rao Abbas who is 20 years old and his last job before Congress was at McDonald’s, a job from which he was fired.  Rao Abbas was paid $165,000 per year.  All these people were paid enormous salaries especially considering what members of Congress actually make and what congressional staffers normally make. On Fox News, Judge Andrew Napolitano referred to the group as “the Awan Spy Ring.”  He said they had access to the emails and computer files of every single member of Congress – Democrat and Republican – and was selling what they found.  He did not say who they were selling to but they have been connected to Pakistani Intelligence (the ISI), Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other terrorist or terrorist-supporting organizations. One of the allegations is that these people, who were not particularly highly skilled, were paid millions because of the information they found on congressional computers i.e. bribes.  If that is so, it would explain a lot of what appears to be the insanity of Congress but is in reality acquiesces to bribery.  This scheme or hiring plan, if you will, was apparently concocted by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the congresswoman from Florida.  From 2011 until 2016, she was the chair of the Democrat National Committee.