re: It is official, Awan turning state's evidence

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Exclusive: Police Report Indicates Wasserman Schultz IT Aide Planted Computer For Investigators To find --LUKE ROSIAK Investigative Reporter

A laptop that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has frantically fought to keep prosecutors from examining may have been planted for police to find by her since-indicted staffer, Imran Awan, along with a letter to the U.S. Attorney.

U.S. Capitol Police found the laptop after midnight April 6, 2017, in a tiny room that formerly served as a phone booth in the Rayburn House Office Building, according to a Capitol Police report reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group. Alongside the laptop 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 had the username “RepDWS,” even though the Florida Democrat and former Democratic National Committee chairman previously said it was Awan’s computer and that she had never even seen it.



Awan was banned Feb. 2, 2017, from the congressional computer network because he is a suspect in a cybersecurity investigation, but he still had access to House facilities because Wasserman Schultz continued to employ him.

The laptop was found on the second floor of the Rayburn building — a place Awan would have had no reason to go because Wasserman Schultz’s office is in the Longworth building and the other members who employed him had fired him.

Wasserman Schultz used a televised May 18, 2017 congressional hearing on the Capitol Police budget to threaten “consequences” if Chief Matthew Verderosa did not give her the laptop. “If a member loses equipment,” it should be given back, she said.

Verderosa told her the laptop couldn’t be returned because it was tied to a criminal suspect. Wasserman Schultz reiterated that, while Awan was a suspect, the computer should be returned because it is “a member’s … if the member is not under investigation.”

She changed her story two months later, claiming it was Awan’s laptop — bought with taxpayer funds from her office — and she had never seen it. She said she only sought to protect Awan’s rights. “This was not my laptop,” she said August 3. “I have never seen that laptop. I don’t know what’s on the laptop.”

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