By:  Danielle Doria

The New York Post has an exclusive report that the owner of a New York State limo company responsible for a 2018 crash that killed 20 people was an FBI informant.

Congressperson Elyse Stefanik is seeking a probe into what role the FBI may have played in the crash.

Jon Levine, of The New York Post, writes that After the crash, it emerged the limo company was awash in violations. The doomed vehicle lacked both federal and state certifications. The car had been retrofitted with 12 feet of extra carriage added to the middle. It had failed numerous spot roadside inspections and has been ordered off the road by the Department of Transportation. Its brakes failed on the day it crashed. Limo driver Scott Lisinicchia, who was killed in the accident, had twice been busted on drug charges in the previous eight years.

It was later revealed that Shahed Hussain, 66, the owner of Prestige Limousine Chauffeur Service, was an FBI informant since 2002 — after he was nabbed for running a scam to help drivers cheat on DMV tests. In 2003 he helped the agency convict an Albany Imam in a sting operation to disrupt a scheme to sell a surface-to-air missile to terrorists in Pakistan. In 2009 he was an informant in a terrorist bomb plot targeting two synagogues in Riverdale and an Air National Guard base.

Shahed Hussain was abroad at the time of the crash and the company was in the care of his son Nauman Hussain. The younger Hussain, 33, later pled guilty to 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide and was sentenced to five years probation and 1,000 hours of community service. The plea was later thrown out by Albany County Judge Peter Lynch, who demanded Nauman Hussain serve jail time. The case is ongoing.

“The FBI makes it clear to informants that any time there’s any run-in with any type of law enforcement or a government agency, they have to be forthcoming to the FBI,” Stefanik said. “So the FBI, I believe, knew about all of these … run-ins with the law and they did nothing. So they have culpability in this deadly limousine crash.”

“They mishandled the source,” Stefanik said to The New York Post, “It led to the death of 20 upstate New Yorkers.”

Stefanik reiterated her vow to subpoena “all documents related to [the FBI’s] handling of that source who owned the limousine company” — a threat that now carries real teeth since Republicans took control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections. The congresswoman said she expected the FBI files on Hussain to be among the “first tranche” of subpoenas out the gate.

The congressional panel, under the leadership of Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), is planning a far-reaching look at alleged abuses within the Department of Justice and federal intelligence agencies.