« Two More Mayors against Guns Bite the Dust | Main | Yahoo News lets Katie Couric go »

The Mass Media and Self-Parody

Let's see, Democratic House members (including members of the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committee) hire a Pakistani national named Imran Awan to control their IT and have access to all their email and files. Their employers applied for him and several relatives (also hired on staff) to get the highest of security clearances, Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. What could possibly go wrong?

It's discovered that he and several other aides have been stealing equipment, including hard drives that he afterward smashes with a hammer. The others are fired five months ago, but Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz keeps him on staff.... Paying him $160,000 a year (a huge Hill salary: legislative aides' salaries average about $38K, and even chiefs of staff makes about $143,000). He's also allowed to take out a $165,000 unsecured loan from the Congressional Federal Credit Union and wire that to Pakistan.

Capitol Hill Police discover a laptop Awan has stolen from Schultz and hidden away, seize it as evidence, and Schultz publicly threatens, during the police's appropriations hearings, that there will be "consequences" if they don't give it back, now.

Awan is arrested at Dulles International Airport as he tries to flee the country to Pakistan, and charged with bank fraud. Only after the arrest does Debbie Wasserman Schultz fire him.

My local paper picks up the AP story and runs it under the headline of "Wasserman Schultz Fires IT Staffer Following Fraud Arrest".

(PS: the judge RELEASED him at the initial appearance? Some sort of "high intensity supervision" that says he can't travel more than 50 miles? The fellow was obviously trying to flee the country when arrested....