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House Intel Chair: Declassified Docs Show Obama-Directed Psyop


By: M.D. Kittle | July 30, 2025

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/30/house-intel-chair-says-declassified-docs-show-obama-directed-psyop/

Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., on Fox News to talk about the Russian collusion hoax.
Rep. Rick Crawford says the report his committee put together in 2020 exposes the people behind the Russia collusion hoax.

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M.D. Kittle

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Rep. Rick Crawford joined the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in early 2017, just as the Obama administration was putting the Russia collusion hoax into motion. The Arkansas Republican and his fellow committee members would soon be up to their necks in one of the darkest chapters in U.S. intelligence history. 

On Jan. 6, 2017, documents suggest, the deep state was setting up its own brand of insurrection, pushing an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) filled with dubious information and sourcing that Crawford believes was designed to topple President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office. 

“Forgive me for being coarse, but these [intelligence] analysts, for lack of a better term, crapped all over ICD [Intelligence Community Directive] 203. They did not follow it in the slightest,” Crawford said on the latest episode of The Federalist Radio Hour. He was referring to the analytic standards that CIA agents and analysts must follow. They didn’t.

“It was ignored and they went forward with their own narrative that was done simply to discredit President Trump and to spin a narrative that was false: That he was involved with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin in helping to change the outcome of the election,” he added. 

‘It Didn’t Matter If It Was True’

Crawford, who in January took over as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has, like his Republican colleagues, been waiting a long time for the public to know what he has known for years. The recent declassification and release of the committee’s 2020 majority staff report lays to waste the lie that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election and exposes the likes of then-CIA Director John Brennan for driving a deeply flawed intelligence assessment. The report, released last week by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, found that one “scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win.” 

The ICA “ignored strong indicators supporting the alternative hypothesis that, at a minimum, Putin didn’t care who won and even had reasons to prefer a Clinton victory,” and that by “adopting a single-track explanation for Putin’s actions — that he ‘preferred’ candidate Trump and ‘aspired’ to help him win — the ICA authors had little choice but to ignore contrary evidence and attempt to force-fit weak evidence to make their case.”

And there was a plethora of contrary evidence. Career intelligence officials warned Brennan and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that they were barking up the wrong tree. The Trump-hating deep staters didn’t listen. Forcing their collusion narrative, Brennan and crew relied on the Steele dossier to the disgust of intelligence analysts who saw it for the garbage political opposition research that it was. According to the committee report, a CIA analyst told investigators that Brennan “refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’” 

Crawford found the old CIA director’s comment particularly troubling. 

“It didn’t matter if it was true, as far as he was concerned. It rang true so it was going to be central to their assessment,” the committee chairman said. “The analytic integrity was completely lacking.” 

Never mind that Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for the Steele dossier, littered with salacious and unverifiable opposition research. 

‘Willing Accomplices’

Crawford said there’s a reason why the damning documents have been sealed for so long. Former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who chaired the Intelligence Committee in the thick of the Russia collusion hoax and who was viciously attacked by Democrats and the media for combatting the lies, tried unsuccessfully to get the 2020 report released. Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who served as chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the previous session of Congress, tried as well but ran into a brick wall, Crawford said. That changed with Trump’s return to the White House in January. The administration returned the documents to the House Intelligence Committee, and they are now open to public inspection. 

“So, what we see here is a fraud, a hoax perpetrated on the American people at the expense of President Trump,” the congressman said. “And this was nothing more than a Psyop, a psychological operation against the American people, really under the direction of President Obama and conducted by the IC leadership team.”

And the hoax was greatly assisted by a Trump-hating corporate media that gladly gobbled up all of the false “tips” the Intelligence Community and like-minded political operatives fed them, Crawford said. 

“It’s not as though the media were just reporting facts that were being put out there in the public sphere. They were willing accomplices,” the chairman said. So much so, he added, that the Steele dossier was leaked to Yahoo News, and the leak was used as a predicate to go after Trump and launch the FBI’s politically-driven Crossfire Hurricane sham probe. Ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok, the partisan player behind the investigation, suggested as much in a Sept. 23, 2016 text, boasting that the Steele dossier was able to “influence” media.

“Looking at the Yahoo article, I would definitely say at a minimum Steele’s reports should be viewed as intended to influence as well as to inform,” the disgraced former agent, fired from the FBI in August 2018, wrote in the declassified communications. 

Now that same accomplice media is ignoring or dismissing the bombshell documents. 

“So, the media essentially becomes not an unwitting player in this whole thing but a witting accomplice, like, ‘Yes, give us this information. We’ll help spin this. We’ll help sell it to the American people, we’ll help take down President Trump,’” Crawford said. “And they’re not about to admit that they made that mistake or that they were involved in that because that would be a huge revelation. It would discredit them all.” 

‘An Absolute Travesty’

Like corporate media, the Intelligence Community has had plenty of struggles with the truth over the years. Crawford and the Subcommittee on Central Intelligence Agency have investigated more recent suspect ICAs. 

“The Intelligence Community (IC) has attempted to thwart the Subcommittee’s investigative efforts to uncover the truth at every turn. Despite this, the Subcommittee has uncovered information illustrative of problems with the ICA’s creation, review, and release,” Crawford wrote in the subcommittee’s interim report in December on “the Intelligence Community’s Conclusions on Anomalous Health Incidents.” The report asked, “Is the Intelligence Community Hiding the Real Reason for This Phenomenon?”

Crawford said he wants to believe that the perpetrators of the Russia collusion hoax will ultimately be held accountable, but he worries about legal “loopholes.” The major players have gone on to very lucrative post-IC careers, serving as “credible experts” to the same news outlets that ran with their twisted intelligence. 

“That’s an absolute travesty because what they have done, they really, in my opinion, perpetrated the largest, deepest, widest hoax we’ve ever seen in American history, and they seem to be proud of it. And that’s the thing that bothers me the most.” 

Listen to The Federalist Radio Hour podcast interview with Rep. Rick Crawford here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

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House Dem IT Suspects Wanted Untraceable Payments — And Sure Enough, Millions Disappeared


Reported by Photo of Luke Rosiak Luke Rosiak | Investigative Reporter | 8:51 PM 07/05/2017

URL of the original posting site: http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/05/house-dem-it-suspects-wanted-untraceable-payments-and-sure-enough-millions-disappeared/

A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing “ghost employees” on the congressional payroll.

Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?

Capitol Police revoked the Awans’ access to the congressional IT system in February 2017 after a major data breach was detected. Their access had allowed them to read emails and files of dozens of members, including many serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

House Democrats have been nonchalant about the allegations, with some saying it was just a misunderstanding or the Capitol Police framed the Awans due to Islamophobia.

But official documents, court records and multiple interviews suggest the crew may have engaged in tax fraud, extortion, bankruptcy fraud and insurance fraud and the money could have been funneled overseas. Abid has hired high-profile attorney James Bacon who specializes in anti-money laundering litigation.

The Awans share modest homes, drive unremarkable cars and report little in the way of assets on congressional disclosures. The family owns significant amounts of Virginia rental properties, which are heavily financed, with second mortgages sometimes taken out. It’s unclear where the rental income goes because the Awans insist tenants pay in odd ways.

The Daily Caller News foundation interviewed multiple current and former tenants who said Imran insisted rent be paid in untraceable ways. Many of those TheDCNF interviewed about the Awans asked not to be identified for fear of suffering retaliation by the family, particularly renters to whose homes Imran has keys.

“He only wants cash — for the security deposit, everything. The mortgage is probably $600, we pay $1,800 a month,” one said.

“I would write the rent to all sorts of different people,” another claimed. While still another tenant said the family insisted on blank money orders.

Those interviewed also were puzzled that Congress kept the Awans on the payroll full-time when the family spent months of the year in Pakistan.

The four Awans were each making approximately $160,000 a year on Capitol Hill. Other House IT workers told TheDCNF that the Awans appeared to hold no-show jobs, with bare-bones services provided, and it appeared one person was doing the work for the rest of them.

Cristal Perpignan, a former Awan renter, said Imran instructed her to pay the rent to Imran’s friend, Rao Abbas, who lived in the basement of the home she occupied and was also on the House payroll as an IT worker. But Perpignan said Abbas spent his days at home.

Imran’s wife purchased the home in 2008 for $470,000. A second mortgage was taken out in 2012, and — at least on paper — it was sold to Imran’s 22-year old brother Jamal in November 2016 for $620,000 — $43,000 more than its assessed value.

All but five percent of Jamal’s purchase, $589,000, was financed by the bank, according to records reviewed by TheDCNF. This means the transaction netted the family $119,000 of the bank’s money even as the house remained a rental property, without the ownership ever leaving the family.

According to Wells Fargo, people can’t use a standard mortgage for a rental property. The bank must be told of the intent to use the property as a rental, and the applicant generally is required to make a 20 percent down payment. There are no notes in property records that it was not an arms-length sale.

While the Awans had access to the emails of members of sensitive congressional committees, Abid incorporated a car dealership in Falls Church, Va., with Nasir Khattek, who operated an established car dealership next door. Khattek later said in sworn testimony that the Abid dealership’s financial books were a sham. Abid’s dealership received $100,000 from Ali Al-Attar, an Iraqi politician who practiced medicine in the Washington, D.C. region and is a fugitive from the U.S. Department of Justice. The dealership racked up debts to people who subsequently accused Abid of fraud, according to court documents. Abid filed bankruptcy to discharge the debts, while his family members remained untouched. Khattek testified the dealership was run as a “family business,” with Imran, not Abid, in control.

As some of Capitol Hill’s highest-paid employees, the brothers had to submit financial disclosure statements to Congress, but Abid attested that he had no

liabilities. Imran checked “no” when asked whether his spouse had any income, even though she was making a top salary from the same employer reviewing the disclosure documents.

The disclosures also ask about rental income, but the Awans often listed either no or little rent payments received.

Though people in bankruptcy procedures must sell off their assets to pay creditors, Abid kept two houses by swearing he was separated or divorcing from his wife and living apart. Years later, they are still together.

In January, as their father lay dying, the brothers tried to commandeer assets stored in his name, according to their stepmother, Samina Gilani. They installed listening devices in her house, plugged in a device behind her computer, and forbade her from leaving the house, she said in court documents and interviews. The brothers’ aim was to obtain a power of attorney giving them control of their father’s assets in Pakistan, their stepmother told TheDCNF.

“Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful, and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan,” Gilani said in court documents.

Days before their father died, the brothers badgered him to sign over assets as insignificant as a $5,000 car — assets they didn’t need, according to a relative. The relative speculated the goal was to make their father

desperate enough to sign the Pakistani power of attorney, which would give them access to potentially sizable offshore bank accounts.

They also had their dying father sign a form making Abid administrator of his life insurance policy, though nothing about the change altered Gilani’s position as beneficiary.

However, Jamal falsely attested on the death certificate that his father was divorced, and Abid made himself beneficiary, leading to a lawsuit alleging life insurance fraud. Outside of the Fairfax County court during the case, Abid would say only that “people could harm me,” declining to explain what he meant.

The Capitol Police criminal investigation has gone on for months, but of more than a dozen people with ties to the Awans who were interviewed by TheDCNF, most have not been contacted by officials. Among those investigators have not interviewed is Gilani, even though the brothers allegedly wiretapped and extorted her — behavior that could be highly relevant to the Capitol Hill probe.

Follow Luke on Twitter. Send tips to luke@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. PGP key.

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