Obstruction of Justice

by Luke Rosiak

  “No, I have not, your honor.”

  “I have to ask you a series of questions under oath. . . if you do not give truthful answers, you can be prosecuted for perjury,” she said. She carefully asked him a series of questions. There was only one problem: she had no idea what this case was about. “The facts are laid out in the Statement of Offense. . . I actually don’t have a copy,” she said.

  “We left a copy here,” Cooney gestured.

  “I’ve heard very little facts in this case. This statement is saying this is what you did in this case. Did you falsely represent to the Congressional Federal Credit Union . . . ?” She described the minor transgression.

  “Do you understand you could receive a maximum of thirty years imprisonment? Sentencing guidelines call for two to five years. The maximum fine is $1 million.” But in this case, the government would ensure the penalties were small.

  “The parties have submitted a written letter that outlines the plea agreement in this case. It is eleven pages long. One count of making a false statement on a loan application. In return, the government will not pursue any other charges. The government has agreed not to oppose a probation-only sentence and will not seek a fine or restitution.” Oh, and the charges would be dropped against Hina, who falsely claimed a medical emergency to liquidate her federal retirement account before moving to Pakistan with a cardboard box full of undeclared cash.

  “It also includes a paragraph that says public allegations that Mr. Awan stole congressional computers, that the government conducted a thorough investigation and found no basis.” It was an almost unheard-of inclusion, prosecutors going out of their way to say that Imran had not done things.

  The Government agrees that the public allegations that your client stole US House of Representatives (“House”) equipment and engaged in unauthorized or illegal conduct involving House computer systems do not form the basis of any conduct relevant to the determination of the sentence in this case. The Government conducted a thorough investigation of those allegations, including interviewing approximately 40 witnesses; taking custody of the House Democratic Caucus server, along with other computers, hard drives, and electronic devices; examining those devices, including inspecting their physical condition and analyzing log-in and usage data; reviewing electronic communications between pertinent House employees; consulting with the House Office of General Counsel and House information technology personnel to access and/or collect evidence; and questioning your client during numerous voluntary interviews. The Government has uncovered no evidence that your client violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems. Particularly, the Government has found no evidence that your client illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members’ offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information, including classified or sensitive information.

  The judge continued that Imran was receiving partial immunity. “It specifies that he will not be charged with any non-violent offense for which the District of Columbia was made aware.” She had one final question: “Has anyone made any promises to you in connection with your plea deal other than what’s in the plea agreement?”

  “No,” Imran responded.

  “Mr. Awan is now judged guilty for the offense.” The Washington Post reporter stood up and left the hearing halfway through, causing the judge to pause.

  Gowen seized the opportunity to speak up, and yet again, the prosecutors and the defense attorneys appeared to be working together. “Both parties are in agreement to ask for an expedited sentencing.”

  Like the prosecutors, the judge seemed to believe that asking a criminal defendant’s attorney was an accurate way to gauge the truth. “I know very little about you. I’m going to be looking to the material that your lawyer provides so I can know more about you.”

  Gowen then took it upon himself to speak for the prosecutors. “I don’t believe the government objects to this: he’s had the GPS on, he’s cooperated with the government through eight meetings with the government,” he said. If Marando had been there instead of Cooney, he perhaps could have evaluated whether refusing proffers constituted “cooperating.”

  “With respect to the 50-mile radius and the GPS . . . ” The judge complimented Imran for fulfilling his meager check-in responsibilities. “He’s done so well,” she said.

  Cooney replied: “Under the circumstances, we do not oppose the request to remove the GPS, but not the 50-mile radius.”

  “What’s the reason for fifty?” the judge said. Let me guess, I thought. It has something to do with Saif Rao in New York.

  “He has some friends and relatives in New York,” Gowen said. “Can in-person check-in be changed to phone?”

  Cooney was beginning to realize that Gowen had little gratitude. “It’s the first step down, so I’m reluctant to do it all at once,” the prosecutor said.

  The judge sided with Gowen. After all, this was just a bank fraud case, and with no prison or fine on the table, what reason did he have to flee? “I’ll change it to twice a week by phone. You can come downstairs to pretrial services to have the device removed.”

  Now it was Hina’s turn to jump on the precedent. Lotze, her lawyer, spoke up for the first time. “Hina askes to waive the once a week check-in.”

  The judge let out a loud sigh. “It’s a phone call.”

  When court let out, a citizen journalist bolted down to pretrial services, where Imran would have his ankle monitor removed, and U.S. Marshals protected Imran from him. Imran disappeared through back hallways. A loading dock gate opened, and a car with blacked out windows backed into the dock, where U.S. Marshals could be seen.

  I had nothing to ask Imran or Gowen. I didn’t blame a defense attorney for trying as hard as he could to get his client off the hook. My questions were for the FBI and the DOJ. Cooney simply ignored my questions as he walked down the hallway. Someone patted Merriman on the back and said, “good job.” The DOJ’s spokesman said he’d send me a statement. But when I got outside, it seemed all the reporters who hadn’t followed the case at all already had it, and the Washington Post and Politico were already up with stories.

  Imran, it turned out, had given an in-person interview to the Washington Post before the hearing. The defense, of course, knew exactly what was going to occur. “Awan told The Washington Post in an interview before Tuesday’s hearing that he questions whether the case would have been pursued if he did not have a Pakistani name. He said he came to the United States as a teenager, put himself through college, became a US citizen and built a career on Capitol Hill—what he portrayed as the fulfillment of a dream.”

  His quotes were cartoonish. “This has cost me my reputation, my livelihood, my family,” he said. “I can’t believe this.” He added, “The president used me to advance his political agenda.” The Washington Post didn’t seem to feel the need to inquire about how Donald Trump could have cost Imran his family. They say Republicans like to put government in the bedroom, but something told me this might have had more to do with the fact that his family members said he enslaved, threatened, and extorted them.

  Gowen released a flamboyant statement that said Imran had been cooperating with the government for nineteen months, since November 2016. If this were true, it completely disproved Speaker Ryan’s claim that he left them on the network until February 2017 in order to conduct a sting. Then again, the statement also claimed that the media and Republicans had been trying to frame Imran since before they even knew what had occurred. The statement read:

  For the past 19 months my client, Imran Awan has been the target of a coordinated effort by House Republicans, the President, and right-wing “media” in an effort to destroy the reputation of a dedicated public servant for political purposes. Today’s plea deal resolves, in black and white, that all of the coordinated allegations were not true. My client is not a “spy,” nor part of
a “spy ring.” There has never been any missing server, smashed hard drives, blackmailed members of Congress, or breach of classified information. This was all made up, for purposes of clickbait, Fox News stories, and political opportunism. . . .

  A small army of federal investigators and prosecutors have chased down every wild accusation and found them all to be ridiculous distortions or often wholesale inventions. Imran cooperated with the investigation for 19 months, he answered every single question law enforcement had, and turned over every document requested.

  Then, he used prosecutors’ words in his own press release, printing the paragraph from the plea agreement about how investigators had talked to forty people and concluded that he’d done nothing wrong in the House.

  The Washington Post’s headline read: “Ex-congressional IT staffer reaches plea deal that debunks conspiracy theories about illegal information access.” CNN went with: “Ex-House staffer, subject of conspiracy theories, pleads guilty to bank fraud charge.”1

  “While Awan’s year-long court case revolved solely around bank fraud charges pertaining to an application for a home equity loan, conspiracy theorists have speculated wildly about the case,” the story read. For months, I’d begged reporters to obtain the February 3, 2017, memo from the sergeant at arms that plainly said the server was “missing” and that the Awans made unauthorized access to House computers. But no one had bothered, and without exception, their articles attributed these government-documented facts to “claims by conservative media.”

  The New York Times again essentially let Gowen write their story. “Mr. Gowen said his client falsely listed the property as a primary residence in an effort to quickly transfer money to his father, who was gravely ill and living in Pakistan,” the paper of record explained. Imran, after all, was simply a big-hearted family man. The Times belatedly acknowledged that it had been misled. “Correction: An earlier version of this article, using information from Mr. Awan’s lawyer, referred incorrectly to a transfer of money by Mr. Awan. According to his lawyer, he sent money to Pakistan to help his father; he did not send it directly to his father. And his father had been living in Virginia, not Pakistan, before his death.” But it simply changed the sentence to read that he wired the money to Pakistan to “help” his father in Virginia—something that obviously failed to explain the actual purpose of the transfer.2

  As proof of the thoroughness of its investigation, the DOJ said that it had interviewed forty people over the course of a two years. I’d interviewed more than that in the first month. Hell, the Awans had more than forty employers. The suspects themselves numbered seven. This left no room to talk to even the congressmen who employed them, to say nothing of chiefs of staff, their peers in House IT, and others who knew them inside and outside of the House. And now I knew why the agents came out of the woodwork to talk to witnesses after it was already too late to make a difference: to run up this count. It may be that before the final week, only fifteen people were interviewed over two years.

  Trump’s own attorney general, the narrative went, had embarrassed Trump by debunking a case the president had followed. But the DOJ’s sole public statement didn’t “debunk” anything. Instead, it simply contradicted all available primary evidence without explanation. No matter; the media had their anti-Trump narrative and they weren’t going to question it.

  The truth is, you had to believe in conspiracy theories to believe the prosecutors’ apparent position that various people over the last decade—who for the most part didn’t know each other— had somehow all created remarkably consistent but totally false claims.

  Or there was the eminently more logical explanation: Imran had a long history of extortion-like tendencies, allegedly threatening witnesses, turning victims into culprits, and lying and then getting out of it with more lies, all backed by an unexplained political influence that reeked of blackmail. He had done it again.

  * * *

  Both parties asked for an expedited sentencing, and Gowen came prepared with a lengthy letter that purported to tell Imran’s story. The prosecutors didn’t dispute a single thing in it, even though much of it was readily disprovable with Pakistani and U.S. records. The truth was that since Imran had been convicted of nothing but a single count of bank fraud, the missive was scarcely necessary. This wasn’t a plea for a lenient sentence, it was a brazen middle finger to anyone who thought that facts mattered and that the Department of Justice would enforce the law.

  Imran, the shocking new story went, never did anything wrong in the House. Instead, he was a philanthropist who only wanted to set up a charity in Pakistan. Of course, he lacked the funds to do so, but also was in a “panic” that he had to create a generous charity that instant, so he committed bank fraud in the United States to finance it.3 For months, Gowen had successfully courted the media’s sympathy by saying Imran didn’t "have a pot to piss in” and his family was “living in squalor.” Now, the same media were eating up a story that he was simultaneously a charity magnate building a shelter for battered women. In his sister’s telling, Imran’s charity project extended to “a school for orphans, a mosque for the village to pray in, and a maternity clinic.” How many pots of piss would that cost?

  It was a bizarre tale, one that any clear-thinking observer could see made no sense. This charity endeavor, the court accepted, was doubly motivated by Imran’s love for his family. The shelter would be to “secure his father’s legacy.” Imran loved his father so much that he abandoned him in Virginia during his final months on earth to go to Pakistan? The only use Imran might have for a battered-women’s shelter, I thought, was to fill it up with all the women who alleged that he had personally abused them. Not five feet from him, as the judge heard this comical tale, was Hina Alvi, who said in a lawsuit months before that Imran threatened her with “dire consequences,” pledging to “harm the lives of family of [Hina] if she intervenes.”

  But few people in Washington were thinking clearly in 2018, and Gowen took advantage of the city’s epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Facing an Obama-appointed judge, Gowen made a showboating speech which concluded that Imran should not go to jail because Trump and other Republicans are “deranged,” “pathetic,” and “without a shred of decency.”

  He said the Awans’ “employers had no interest in letting them go and were forced to let them go because of a politicized investigation.”

  Gowen said that Imran had provided investigators “access to his phone, computer, and cloud,” but did not add that rather than issue a search warrant, prosecutors had relied on Imran voluntarily handing over his devices, giving him ample time to modify their contents.

  When Imran entered court, he smirked at me, then approached the judge and choked back tears. He never once had to testify or face cross-examination, but now he gave a sob speech to the court.

  Imran played the part of a kind, godly family man. "We want to thank the prosecution, the FBI, and the Capitol Police," Imran said. "Those people who wrote these stories about me, I forgive them because I am seeking your forgiveness." He added, "Allow me to walk out of this courtroom and be with my family. I stand here with God in my heart. My heart is a sail, and the wind is blowing."

  This contradicted Gowen, who casted doubt that Hina and Imran would stay together—not surprising after Hina's lawsuit —saying, "By the end of this today, you will allow Hina to build her family wherever she chooses and allow Imran to visit his father's grave and secure his legacy."

  No matter. It was now Judge Chutkan’s turn to come to his defense. “Mr. Awan and his family are immigrants, they came here legally. He excelled when working in Congress, and his support for his family has remained strong despite the unbelievable amount of scurrilous media attention.”

  She continued: “There have been numerous baseless conspiracy theories lobbed at him from the highest levels of government, all of them fully investigated by the U.S. attorney. Based on the material submitted by the defense, the harassment of threats will probably con
tinue for some time.” She then slowly and dramatically read the paragraph that prosecutors had so unusually inserted into Imran’s plea agreement; the one that claimed he had done nothing wrong in the House. “The government included that extraordinary paragraph in its plea deal and I commend the government for that.”

  Gowen offered to pay a fine, but Judge Chutkan turned down the offer. “In this court’s opinion, he has suffered enough. You are hereby sentenced to time served and three months supervised release. . . . Good luck to you Mr. Awan, and have a good Eid.” Imran hugged Gowen.

  Democratic chiefs of staff, many from offices most suspiciously linked to Imran, were now so confident that the media whitewash was complete that they went on the record to defend someone who violated every cybersecurity tenet in the House and made unauthorized access to their servers. The cognitive dissonance with Democrats’ public statement about cybersecurity didn’t even matter. Joshua A. Rogin, the chief of staff to Representative Ted Deutch of Florida who implausibly had nearly the entire Awan group on his payroll despite also having another IT aide, wrote a letter of support saying Imran has “paid his debt to society one million times over.”4

  Others coming forward to defend Imran were Jameel Aalim-Johnson, the former chief of staff to the notoriously corrupt Congressman Gregory Meeks;5 Patrice Willoughby, the onetime executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus who said Imran had been the victim of “racist” attacks; and Eva Dominguez, the former chief of staff for Representative Robert Wexler who claimed that Imran’s alleged charity extended to sending “money every month to the widow and children” of the driver who was killed in the car crash in Pakistan that wounded his father. Pakistani media told another story: that Imran had extorted the widow, Bushra Bibi, threatened her, and framed her family members for crimes.