by Luke Rosiak
When it came to the procurement scheme, the FBI said it “knows” that multiple staffers, in addition to the “Family,” were involved. But most Democrats were refusing to cooperate, the FBI said—an admission that was obvious enough given how the case had been treated in the House, but which contradicted statements by Democrats and House officials. The point was that the “victims” weren’t clamoring for a prosecution. For many cops, that’s enough not to bother.
Imran was not exactly cooperating either. The FBI was providing him a “proffer”—a process generally used to allow a suspect to provide information about others in exchange for a plea deal— but his defense attorney was rejecting the offers. Through eight such meetings, the government kept giving him more and more chances, presumably settling for less and less. The $7 million-dollar question was: if Imran was refusing to plea, why didn’t they simply bring charges in court?
Representative Gohmert pointed out that prosecutors had never talked to the former inspector general, Theresa Grafenstine, even though she’d done the foundational work on the probe. Theresa was no longer part of the legislative branch and thus not subject to the “speech and debate clause” that could limit prosecutors’ ability to gather information. She could be a way around the obstruction.
“We can subpoena her tomorrow,” an FBI official said to Sessions. “We’ve got a grand jury running.” There was, in fact, no grand jury currently hearing evidence to support charges in the Awan house case, even though an FBI memo dated December 6, 2016, talked of “fraud against the U.S. government” and referenced banking records showing that Abid was hiding money through car dealerships. But admitting that they had never even brought these facts before a grand jury, which undoubtedly would have returned indictments, would have raised more than a few questions from the attorney general.
The congressmen told me Sessions seemed taken aback—he had never heard of any of this. The systematic fraud in the House of Representatives, massive violations of cybersecurity, disappearing computer equipment, and a congressional laptop popping up in a phone booth had not been brought to the attorney general’s attention by the FBI. He seemed genuinely interested in getting the truth, but he was utterly dependent on the FBI to report it to him. You’ll get your answers, Sessions told the Congressman. I want all these things looked into, Sessions told Stephen Richardson of the FBI Criminal Division.
Representative Gohmert had seen how the FBI chose to pursue some investigations with all the fire and fury it had, while others it phoned in. In its efforts to find criminal charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, prosecutors sought out an Associated Press reporter who’d broken news on the topic, milked him for information, and used it to build a case.4 When it came to the Awans, even though it was clear that my reporting was the only thing advancing the investigation and that I had more information than I had published, the FBI and prosecutors were uninterested in receiving information from me, and weren’t even contacting sources whose names I’d printed, like Rashid Minhas. When it came to investigations against Trump, they raided the office of his lawyer, Michael Cohen. When it came to Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s laptop in a phone booth, prosecutors entertained a preposterous attorney-client privilege argument, apparently based on the presence of a hand-scribbled note that read “attorney client privilege” nearby. Richardson confirmed that the laptop was the former DNC chair’s, and assured Sessions that they were “close to resolving that issue” without explaining why they hadn’t simply fought the attorney-client canard from the beginning. Trump was right. Whatever was on that laptop, Representative Wasserman Schultz desperately wanted to keep it out of prosecutors’ hands, which should have made them all the more eager to look at it.
When it came to these Democratic members of Congress and their employees, it seemed the FBI was being exceedingly credulous, naïve even, in accepting any implausible explanation at face value. The FBI’s “investigation” seemed to consist of simply asking Gowen for an excuse, then scoffing at any suggestion that it might not be true.
To test this, Representative Gohmert asked about the electronic devices the marine, Andre Taggart, had turned in. They were non-government and there was nothing on them, an FBI official in the meeting said. As with everything else, he didn’t explain. I thought: Was he really contending that Imran was the first person in the modern era to prefer a Blackberry over an iPhone for personal use, and that he’d bought many for himself? That he collected industrial-sized quantities of printer toner on his own dime? How did they conclude that the items didn’t belong to the House when the inventory lists had been gamed by Imran himself? Or was Richardson claiming even more bizarrely, as Imran’s lawyer did, that Taggart had never found anything but a car radio?
As another way around Congress invoking privilege and Democrats refusing to cooperate, the questioners mentioned the involvement of the multi-billion-dollar company CDW-G. It was a private company whom the DOJ could subpoena whether the House liked it or not, and the company (or its employee) systematically falsified financial documents, apparently at Imran's request. The company had publicly acknowledged that prosecutors had already subpoenaed it, while also saying prosecutors told it—for reasons that were unclear—the company wasn’t a target.
The FBI officials in the meeting said they were not aware that invoices from the company CDW-G had been subpoenaed and suggested that the U.S. Attorney’s Office must have handled that part of the investigation. Those records were a basic part of the procurement fraud. How could the FBI claim to be investigating procurement fraud without knowing the first thing about how it happened?
One problem, a common technique to hamstringing congressional oversight, was that Richardson and the others answering questions in the meeting were too high up. It’s a misconception that higher-ranking officials know more; in almost every case, they know less than the rank-and-file working directly with the evidence. Representatives Gohmert and Perry needed to meet with agents working on the case. The officials agreed to schedule such a meeting. It would give lawmakers an opportunity to share evidence with the agents, and perhaps reveal whether the FBI was pursuing the investigation aggressively or just going through the motions. The DOJ said the briefing would have to be held in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. But DOJ dragged its feet on setting up the meeting until it was clear it wasn’t going to happen until after the March 8 court date, by which time a plea deal might already be inked.
Three days before the court date, the court appearance was postponed by two months until May 3. The SCIF meeting was scheduled for March 20, but at 9:45 p.m. the night before, the DOJ canceled it over email. The agent handling the briefing had retired, the DOJ said. Had he abruptly retired without notice just that day? Was only one FBI agent to attend the briefing? And if he was an important member of the investigative team, how would the investigation proceed without him? The SCIF meeting was rescheduled for May 18—restoring it to a pointless position after the court date.
* * *
Prosecutors never subpoenaed Theresa Grafenstine—not “tomorrow,” or ever. But in late April 2018, prosecutor Michael Marando asked her to meet at a coffee shop. It was two years to the day since she began an investigation in which she was the most knowledgeable official, and it was the first time prosecutors ever attempted to talk with her. At the table were Marando, a Capitol Police officer, and Spencer Brooks, an FBI agent who previously worked an aggressive case against former representative Steve Stockman, a Texas Republican who was charged with wire fraud, violating election law, and filing a false tax return.5
For two hours, Theresa walked the group through the whole story: what she had found, how it was clear House leaders wanted an investigation that was designed to find nothing, and how the Capitol Police had gladly acquiesced. She looked straight at the Capitol Police officer and told him his boss was a moron. “You have these people who are not cyber guys leading a cyber investigation, and that’s a way to
kind of kill it.” She told them how months into the probe, the Capitol Police had said, “Well, maybe one day we’ll do a search warrant. We don’t think we’re there yet.”
Marando then made a remarkable claim. “I told them to say that,” he said. “We know it made them look dumb. We were doing stuff behind the scenes that we couldn’t tell anyone about so it wouldn’t get back to the members.” The implication was that they actually did get a search warrant on the Awans’ homes, but the language was evasive. When she asked point-blank if he had executed search warrants on their homes after all, he wouldn’t say yes.
Not even after the missing server? The Capitol Police officer responded with a stunning backtrack: “It never went missing.” First of all, that didn’t answer anything. It was indisputable that the police believed it to be missing at the time, and nevertheless left the Awans on the network and let Imran leave the country. The inaction of the Capitol Police left no doubt that they didn’t want there to be a problem, so it was a little too convenient that the missing server had now apparently gone un-missing. Second, the officer said it with scorn, even though if the server really never went missing, that meant it was an egregiously embarrassing error on the part of his own police force. Yet another misstep that spoke volumes about why the Capitol Police should not have been handling this to begin with.
“So, Jamie Fleet and Phil Kiko made it up? Why would they do that?” Theresa asked. Both men had talked with great concern about how the server was missing, and Kiko had written an official memo stating that it was “missing.” Why would Nancy Pelosi operative Jamie, who had gone out of his way to hinder this investigation, concoct a smoking gun that made the Awans’ conduct seem worse?
“I looked at the serial number myself last week,” the officer said. “It’s in the evidence room.”
Marando tried a contradictory tact. “This is bigger than you know, and we don’t want anyone to accidentally interfere. There’s a lot here that we’re working on.” She should sleep easy knowing that the apparent inaction was precisely because it was being conducted at the highest levels, like a national security operation. He looked at her, his pleading eyes feigning empathy, and said, “We’re on your side.”
But Theresa wasn’t so sure. “You know what, time will tell. Everything you said to me is pandering and humoring just to hear me out. If you wanted to know what happened in this case, you wouldn’t have blocked me from investigating it a year ago,” she said.
Marando asked, “How do you know the Capitol Police blocked your investigation?” It was as if he wanted her assistance in preparing a defense for the criticism. Then they talked about Tom Hungar, the House’s general counsel.
“Tom Hungar is withholding evidence from you,” Theresa said.
“No, he’s not. He’s fully cooperative,” Marando said.
Theresa replied: “I was in several meetings where he specifically said he was going to go through and scrub everything for speech and debate.”
“He’s been completely cooperative,” Marando repeated.
“Sean Moran and Jamie Fleet, we suspect them of leaking.” he added, referring to the Republican and Democratic lead staffers on the House Administration Committee.
Theresa laughed. Jamie had made no secret that he was a source for Politico’s reporting on the scandal. Marando seemed more concerned with who knew what than with prosecuting the suspects.
Then they talked about me. “Are you talking to that reporter, Luke? Every time he writes a story, we have to expend energy putting out a fire. He’s beating a dead horse. We just want to wrap this up.”
That raised the question: was there a predetermined conclusion? In the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, almost every major player was given immunity, and a statement clearing the candidate was drafted before the investigation was complete. I couldn’t help but wonder if something similar was happening here.
* * *
After the amped-up pronouncements to the attorney general about three teams of the FBI’s finest agents being all over the case—notwithstanding the FBI affidavit in which a first-year agent followed Hina to the airport, found $12,000 in undeclared cash in a cardboard box, and was refused an interview, then let her board the flight anyway while recording that she’d likely never return to the United States—the FBI began sending a different message to the AG’s office, one impossible to argue with because it was so blithe: “there’s nothing there.” It was obvious that Sessions was not getting the full picture from the FBI, and that Sessions needed an independent assessment. If anything, this case was turning more interesting, implicating the FBI in misconduct.
Representative Gohmert’s office arranged with the DOJ for former Inspector General Theresa Grafenstine to meet with Rachael Tucker, who had worked for Sessions since he was a senator and now served as a top political appointee for the attorney general. In January 2018, they met at a cafe down the street from the Justice Department; an arrangement that kept Theresa’s name off the visitor logs in case rogue elements of the FBI were looking over Sessions’ shoulder. Theresa gave her a copy of her presentation as well as a timeline outlining her efforts to brief Ryan and other members of Congress. But a few days later, Tucker seemed to lack a grasp on the basics. “What is CDW-G?” she asked.
If Sessions’ staff was willing to put the time in to study the facts, they would quickly see that the FBI’s assertions that there was “nothing there” were plainly false. But if they lacked the rigor or dedication to sort through materials and identify issues and discrepancies—the kind of nuance required to do real oversight work that cuts through spin—they’d be left simply relying on the FBI’s word because it was the easy way out. And that’s what appeared to be occurring. “I just don’t have time to deal with this much more,” Tucker said.
Theresa pointed out that she’d already spoken with the FBI with troubling results, so it would be more helpful to meet with someone who could oversee the FBI’s handling of the case, such as a Sessions staffer or the U.S. attorney that supervised prosecutor Marando.
Tucker was defensive. “Listen,” she said, “None of that is my fault. I understand you all are frustrated but I’m trying to make it right and dwelling on things like, ‘they’re not actually interested,’ isn’t helpful.”
Tucker was more concerned with political risk to Sessions—as if the Democrats would ever warm up to the man they’d incessantly called a racist—than to catching the FBI in lies, even if it was now clear that the FBI’s conduct in the case didn’t mesh with the facts. “My job is to protect my boss. I can’t be seen as influencing an investigation,” she said. “It looks weird and is not good for my boss. I’m not contacting the U.S. [attorney] or prosecutor on this.”
She reflexively defended the meager resources the FBI had dedicated to the case, deploying first-year agent Brandon Merriman, failing to talk to basic witnesses, and declining to search the suspects’ homes. “What I will say is that these are people with very limited amounts of time. They don’t have time to hear it,” Tucker said. The FBI had plenty of time to spy on Trump’s campaign aides and conduct a pre-dawn raid on his campaign manager, and on any given day they were handling any number of relatively mundane cases. But when it came to systematic fraud in the House, disappearing equipment, data flying off of the House network, and a vanishing House Democratic Caucus server, there simply weren’t resources.
Theresa had a choice: talk again with the FBI, or Sessions’ office would move onto other issues. Theresa mulled it over and agreed to talk with the FBI a second time. But Sessions’ aide never relayed the message, instead claiming Theresa had refused.
* * *
On May 10, Representative Gohmert and the other members of Congress, many of them part of both the Freedom Caucus and the Judiciary Committee, decided they needed to speak with the former IG themselves. Theresa refused, both because she feared an appearance of partisanship and because she felt she’d already done her part and then some. She was ti
red.
With the repeated delays in court, the DOJ appeared to be gauging whether they could get away with brushing the entire Awan affair under the rug—thereby avoiding the ire of more than forty irate Democrats—or whether doing so would damage the Bureau’s reputation. That depended on what witnesses knew and what they would say publicly.
If I published everything I knew, it would be hard for the FBI to claim it was all some misunderstanding. But there was only so much time. One story I’d sat on, until then, was about the government “inadvertently” giving evidence to the defense and prosecutors leaking what I was working on to Democrats. When Theresa read the story, it dissolved her concerns about meeting with Republicans. It was obvious that Republican bias wasn’t the issue in this case; Democratic partisanship was.
Theresa agreed to meet with Representative Gohmert and his fellow lawmakers on May 16, one day before they were to meet with the FBI in the SCIF. The FBI was likely expecting ill-formed, vague questions that they could easily wave away. Instead, the meeting with Theresa would help the congressmen to prepare questions that were targeted like lasers. Representative Gohmert and Theresa both knew what every good prosecutor knows: the best questions are the ones to which you already know the answer.
Representative Gohmert sent a few questions to the FBI in advance. But the biggest ones were saved for in person. The FBI seemed to suspect that Theresa was talking to Representative Gohmert, and prosecutor Marando asked to meet with her again at the exact same time she was supposed to be on Capitol Hill.