Are the Awan Brothers Linked to Hezbollah?

Following the bombshell report from POLITICO alleging the Obama administration neglected the growth of Hezbollah — and, in fact, obstructed the DEA several times in their efforts to subvert the narco-terrorist group to protect the Iran deal — new links may have been discovered between the global terror network and the Awan brothers, the disgraced former IT professionals employed by Democrat members of the House of Representatives and the DNC.

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In addition to being suspected of moving sensitive data to an unsecured server and allegedly stealing procured computer equipment during their time working for Democrats in the House, Imran and Abid Awan also ran several companies including used car dealerships. One of the allegations in the POLITICO piece is that Hezbollah began taking on new business ventures to launder the money they were making off the sale of cocaine in the U.S. — including used car dealerships.

Imran Awan and his family members were congressional IT aides who investigators said made unauthorized access to the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times. At the same time as they worked for and could read all the emails of congressmen who sat on committees like Intelligence, Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs, they also ran a car dealership that took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive and whose financial books were indecipherable and business patterns bizarre, according to testimony in court records.

While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism, according to an explosive new Politico expose.

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Luke Roskiak, the Daily Caller reporter who has been following the Awan story, told Fox News yesterday that the Awans’ behavior fit the pattern of the behavior of other Hezbollah operatives, leading Fox News host Bret Baier to raise the concern later with his primetime panel. The idea was taken seriously but ultimately dismissed as less damning than the Obama administration ignoring Hezbollah to secure the Iran deal. One panelist even suggested that the Hezbollah-linked fugitive who gave money to the Awans’ car dealership, because he was based in Lebanon, was much-ado-about nothing given the pervasiveness of Hezbollah in that region.

Nonetheless, as Rosiak notes, the Awans’ modest lifestyle despite their high salaries and the money and equipment that went missing on their watch, bears the hallmarks of a laundering operation.

The money that disappeared between the Awans’ dealership, some $7 million in congressional pay, the equipment suspected of disappearing from Congress under their watch, and their other side businesses — all while they displayed few signs of wealth and frequently haggled in court over small amounts of money — raise questions about whether the Awans might have been laundering money or sending it to a third party.

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Is it possible that Democrats inadvertently hired and employed for years individuals they allowed to access their most sensitive data and who exhibited — at the very least — money laundering tendencies that looked a lot like the modus operandi of Hezbollah?

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