In a case that has deepened in seriousness with astonishing regularity since the February revelations about a Capitol Police investigation, a Freedom of Information Act request has uncovered even more damning police reports about Imran Awan, the House Democratic IT staffer at the center of the investigation.
The Pakistani-born IT staffer with close ties to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been at the center of a swirling controversy over massive embezzlement of House funds, ongoing financial fraud, and an alarming level of access to the congressional email accounts of 31 Democratic House members.
A FOIA request filed by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group with the Fairfax Country police department has turned up several police reports of two women, apparently Imran Awan's girlfriends, who called the police in the months before Awan's arrest in July to report domestic battery.
Responding to the domestic violence calls, police officers found one of the women bloodied. She told them she "just wanted to leave." An officer noticed dried blood on Awan's left hand as well, according to the reports. The second woman said she felt like a "slave" held against her will in captivity by Awan. The women were both living in apartments that Awan was paying for.
The new revelations echo disturbing reports from March that Imran Awan and his brothers were allegedly holding their stepmother in captivity to keep her from her husband and their father's death bed, and threatened to have her relatives in Pakistan kidnapped as part of an extortion attempt to get money out of their late father's will.
Court documents include this statement from Samina Gilani, Awan's stepmother:
"Imran Awan showed up and threatened me for calling the police. Mr. Shahid Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police will do harm to me and my family members back in Pakistan and one of my cousins here in Baltimore."Samara Siddique, one of Awan's girlfriends, told officers in a July 18, 2016 police report that "her boyfriend treated her bad and kept her there like a slave ... wants him out of her life. Ms. Siddique wanted info on how to obtain a restraining order against him."
The July 18 phone call was the third time in less than a year that the police had been called because of altercations between Siddique and Awan. On one of the visits, police found small cuts on the woman's stomach and arm.
Throughout the controversy over the last year, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Awan's lawyer have claimed that the many separate investigations of Awan for different crimes might stem from Islamophobia. The three women who filed police reports against Awan for violence and extortion are all Muslim.
When asked about these recent revelations, all but two of Awan's former employers in the House Democratic caucus had no comment. Mainstream media coverage of the scandal has seemed entirely inadequate to the seriousness of the charges and the close proximity of Imran Awan to a person with such a major national profile as a former DNC chair.
This is especially alarming when Wasserman Schultz has gone to such great lengths to shield Awan, including threatening Capitol Police amid their investigation and keeping Awan on her office payroll right up until his arrest.
