Congress Pays $850,000 to Muslim Aides Targeted in Inquiry Stoked by Trump

The House resolved wrongful termination claims by five Pakistani-American technology workers whose case was twisted into a right-wing conspiracy theory pushed by President Trump.

Another of example of trump's xenophobia, racism, and total incompetence all wrapped up in conspiracy. Thankfully the long nightmare of chaos, incompetency and bulls*it will soon be over.

On to the article...

The House of Representatives quietly paid $850,000 this year to settle wrongful termination claims by five Pakistani-American technology specialists, after a set of routine workplace allegations against them morphed into fodder for right-wing conspiracy theories amplified by President Trump.

Together, the payments represent one of the largest known awards by the House to resolve discrimination or harassment claims, and are designed to shield Congress from potentially costly legal action.

But aides involved in the settlement, which has not previously been reported, said it was also an attempt to bring a close to a convoluted saga that led to one of the most durable — and misleading — story lines of the Trump era. The aides said its size reflected a bid to do right by a group of former employees who lost their jobs and endured harassment in part because of their Muslim faith and South Asian origins.

What started as a relatively ordinary House inquiry into procurement irregularities by Imran Awan, three members of his family and a friend, who had a bustling practice providing members of Congress with technology support, was twisted into lurid accusations of hacking government information.

In 2018, Mr. Trump stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at a now-infamous news conference in Helsinki, and implied that one of the employees involved in the House case — a “Pakistani gentleman,” he said — could have been responsible for stealing emails of Democratic officials leaked during the 2016 campaign. His own intelligence agencies had concluded that the stolen emails were part of an election interference campaign ordered by Moscow.

“It is tragic and outrageous the way right-wing media and Republicans all the way up to President Trump attempted to destroy the lives of an immigrant Muslim-American family based on scurrilous allegations,” said Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida, who had employed Mr. Awan and is chairman of the Ethics Committee.

Continue reading BELOW the FOLD.