Duffy, Sona, Finley, and Lunn

Three live accounts from CBC, CTV, and the Ottawa Citizen covering Mike Duffy's allegations under oath at his trial that :
1) Con campaign chair Doug Finley's "black ops" team perpetrated the Saanich-Gulf Islands robocalls in the 2008 federal election (Dec. 10 testimony) and 
2) Doug Finley said Sona could not have perped the Guelph robocalls in the 2011 election because he hadn't taken their black ops course. (Dec. 16 testimony)

John Paul Tasker, live blog at CBC  Dec 10 2015 10:01am :

"[Gary] Lunn met with Duffy and a lobbyist for Molson (big sponsor of the Olympics) at Hy's steakhouse in Ottawa. He wanted to discuss his 'election problems.' Duffy says Lunn was concerned, he had only squeaked by in the last election. 'He wouldn't have won without the intervention of Doug Finley's black ops at headquarters ... They used robocalls to misdirect NDP voters headed to the polls,' Duffy says, the Conservatives knew who all the NDP supporters were (because of their voter database), they made targeted calls to NDP urging them to vote for the NDP candidate. Problem is, the NDP candidate had dropped out after the deadline to withdraw, would still be on the ballot. Lunn told Duffy he had no idea he just a call after from HQ 'saying you're welcome Gary.' " 

"Lunn wanted Duffy to come out for 'third party validation,' to help him win over non-Conservative voters, because it had been so close last time and he had only won because of Finley's dirty tricks."  

John Paul Tasker, liveblog at CBC, Dec 16 2015  1:08 pm today :

"Turning now to June 18, 2009. 'Duty entertainment' with Gary Lunn at Hy's. ... This is the meeting where you described election fraud, Holmes said. Duffy said I didn't say it's election fraud, I said they mobilized robo calls to confuse NDP voters, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not sure if it's fraud, they thought it was clever. Did you think it was clever? I didn't think about it too much. That's why Lunn told me 'I was hanging on by my fingernails,' please come out and help me on labour day to win by riding. Duffy says the motivation to invite me out was for me to help him with campaigning. Would Harper have known about Doug Finley and his black ops? I have no idea. Duffy says I have no knowledge if Harper knew about those robocalls."

"Duffy says robo calls or misdirecting goes on in every party especially during leadership races; Duffy says parliament hill is rife with stories of manipulation. Holmes says did you keep Lunn's story to yourself. Yes. You didn't see it fit to go to Elections Canada to report this? No. Lunn only knew that he got a phone call when someone says 'you're welcome.' 

Duffy says when Michael Sona took the fall for the robo calls in Guelph [in 2011], Doug Finley flew off the handle. 'He hasn't taken our courses,' on black ops, 'he wouldn't know enough to do this,' Duffy says Finley said."

Katie Simpson, live blog at CTV  Dec 16 2015 today :

"Duffy says members of Conservative political "black ops" teams went to international conferences to learn tactics.

When Michael Sona robocall story broke, he was with Doug Finely. Duffy says Finley said "this kid doesn't know enough"

Duffy says Finley said that Sona hadn't been on this course."

Kady O'Malley, live blog for The Citizen on Dec 10, re Saanich-Gulf Islands in 2008 :

"The only way Lunn hung on to that seat, according to Duffy, was through the "black ops" robo-calls campaign to misdirect NDP voters, which was, he recalled, perpetrated by then-Conservative campaign chair Doug Finley."

Today in her Ottawa Citizen blog however, after she quotes Duffy : 

"Doug Finley "raced out" saying that Sona "couldn't be guilty" as he hadn't been on their course."

she writes :

But Duffy *now* concedes that at no point was Finley mentioned during the meeting at Hy's -- Lunn just told him about the subsequent phone call saying "you're welcome."

So just to clarify, Duffy is now backing away from his headline-ready anecdote last week about Doug Finley's black ops teams in Saanich, which now seems to be a conflation of separate stories, but which he acknowledges he didn't share with anyone else, including Elections Canada. (Nor does he seem to have been particularly surprised or appalled by the revelation.)"

Back in February 2012 before he went under the Con bus, Duffy was busy attempting to deflect blame away from the Conservatives about the 2011 election robo/live calls : 

“I don’t believe it was the Conservative Party. But if something is going on, don’t forget, we have all these other groups,” Mr. Duffy said. 

“People have to remember that it’s not just political parties that are operating during a federal election campaign,” he added. “Under the law, we have all kinds of interested third parties that are operating in election campaigns, and I think that’s where we have to be careful. People are throwing stones but there have been third parties that have been attacking Conservatives as well as Liberals and New Democrats.”

Nice try but third party operations are not necessarily independent of the parties they support.
Also notable that Duffy mounted this handy 2012 deflection for the Cons nearly three years after his 2009 meeting with Lunn and his presumed knowledge of Con campaign chair Finley's alleged "black ops" operations in Saanich-Gulf Islands that he never mentioned to Elections Canada.

An excerpt on the 2008 Saanich-Gulf Islands robocalls pilot project from the documentary Election Day in Canada : The Rise of Voter Suppression is online here. 

With Harper now out of office, the media is bored with the whole business of election fraud because it's never going to happen ever again, right?  After Elections Canada determined there had been a widespread campaign of electoral fraud targetting non-Conservatives in at least 247 ridings, they closed their puny investigation and declined to put it before the courts.

Democracy Watch is taking the Conservatives to court because government lawyers won’t. 

If you have a few bucks to spare, kick them over a donation towards their court costs at the link.

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Sunday update : Duffy testimony sparks call for investigation of Saanich robocalls
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Stephen Harper and his "rogue representatives"

Sept 4, 2008 : Harper says alleged Cadman bribe 'preposterous'

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper has told a court that an alleged offer to the late MP Chuck Cadman of a $1-million life insurance policy in exchange for his vote in the Commons in 2005 is “preposterous” and that only “rogue representatives” of the Conservative party could have done such a thing. 

Harper says he authorized party officials Doug Finley and Tom Flanagan to meet with Cadman May 19 to assure him that if he rejoined the Conservative caucus he would automatically secure the party nomination in his B.C. riding and get all the party help he needed to campaign. 

Harper said that when Dona Cadman first asked him in September 2005 if he knew anything about Conservative representatives offering her husband a $1-million life insurance policy, he did not know her husband had told her about it and did not ask where she heard that."

Sept 4 2008 : Harper testifies he OK'd approach to Cadman, unaware of insurance offer

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper has testified that he personally authorized an offer made to late MP Chuck Cadman in 2005 in exchange for his help defeating the Liberal government. But he maintained he knew nothing about an alleged offer of a $1 million life insurance policy to get Cadman's vote, saying he only approved an offer of campaign financial support in the event of an election."

Sept 9 2005.  Tom Zytaruk, biographer of independent MP Chuck Cadman, interviews Stephen Harper [h/t PaulGraham for audio] in the Cadman driveway on Sept 9 2005. Harper was accompanied by executive assistant Ray Novak and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, then Harper's press secretary. Excerpted : 

Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?" 

Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?" 

Zytaruk: "This (inaudible) for the book. Not for the newspaper. This is for the book." 

Harper: "Um, I don't know the details. I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time....But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues.

Zytaruk then asks how official these 'individuals' are.

Harper: "No, no, they were legitimately representing the party. I said don't press him. I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity and, you know, just, you know, if that's what you're saying, make that case but don't press it...."

Dona Cadman affidavit :  

"After my meeting with Mr. Harper concluded, Mr. Tom Zytaruk interviewed Mr. Harper for approximately 10 minutes in my driveway. When that interview concluded Mr. Zytaruk came into my house and I told him that Mr. Harper told me that he had no knowledge about a $1 million insurance policy offer made to my husband by Conservative Party representatives." 

Mike Duffy tries unsuccessfully to tone the story down ...

Steve Vai on Mike Duffy's take on his interview with Chuck Cadman via Galloping Beaver :

"Duffy was trying to tone down the story, offering up a conversation he had with Cadman, wherein he said he didn't want to vote against the budget, for fear he would lose his seat in an election and the insurance he had as an MP because of it. Duffy said Cadman was concerned that he would die and his wife would suffer. What nobody has picked up, Duffy actually connects some dots here. If Cadman was concerned about his insurance as an MP, then what better way to allay his fears in voting with the Cons, than to offer him assurance on that score. Insurance was on Cadman's mind, according to Duffy, which puts the offer into complete context."

Update : Which brings us up to today ... and the RCMP's charges of "criminal conspiracy" within the PMO of breech of trust, fraud and bribery
PM didn't know staff asked Conservative Party to pay Duffy's expenses: spokesperson

"Harper’s director of communications, Jason MacDonald, says Harper had no idea his staff had asked the Conservative Party to pay Sen. Mike Duffy’s ineligible expenses, ... and didn’t know PMO staff wanted a Senate report into Duffy’s expenses sanitized, or that the party’s chief fundraiser tried to influence the independent audit of Duffy’s claims."

Just another case of "rogue representatives" in the PMO again.

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Image at top from CBC At Issue panel..

RoboConfetti : WWMD?

Right now the Cons are "reviewing tapes of every call made by the Responsive Marketing Group call centre in Thunder Bay in the last election before Elections Canada investigators arrive next week," reports CBC, before adding the Cons deny it.

Presumably Steve would be in search of exactly where to place his own 18 minutes of tape hiss or RoboConfetti.

So after four decades of simply adding the suffix -gate onto the scandal du jour - from cleavagegate to gazebogate - Canada finally gets to watch Steve watergate the question : What Would Milhous Do?

On Tuesday Steve pledged to get to the bottom of the lone, single, solitary, isolated, rogue robocalling incident, but by yesterday - with thousands of voters reporting electoral fraud clear across the country - their new story is that it's all just a case of "Liberal and NDP sleaze", a giant RoboConspiracy!

AssMin of National Defence Julian Fantino, who is aghast his name cropped up in the Guelph burner phone logs search warrants at Item #39, is going with the "smear campaign" story, while in-and-out scandal alumnus and the Cons' campaign chair emeritus during the last election, Senator Doug Finley, nails the argument for Con Party innocence : 

“This is the whole point : the central campaign does not know because they had absolutely no idea it was happening.”

Thank you, Senator Finley, for that moment of lucid RoboContemplation.

Speaking of in-and-out shenanigans, here's the new robocalling edition. Quebec Con candidate Bertin-Denis told Le Devoir and two radio stations yesterday that $15,000.01 was funneled into his riding and right back out again in the last election, ostensibly for local RMG poll research that he never saw.
Really? A Con candidate said that?
Oh wait, he has since mysteriously recanted that accusation - a RoboConcaving.

More RoboContenders. Last Friday, after being fingered by Sun TV for complicity in the Guelph robocall shenanigans, Con parliamentary staffer Michael Sona quit his job. Two days later DefMin Airshow MacKay announced "the party doesn't need to investigate any further" because : 

"I think they've identified the individual that was involved in this," he said.

But I guess the God of the Rescue Helicopter Taxi Service wasn't listening because by Tuesday Mr. Sona was publicly protesting his innocence and expressing his hope the real guilty party would be caught. 

In QP yesterday the Cons sent out Mr Creosote to accuse the Libs of sabotaging their own ridings by using a North Dakota automated calling firm :

“These calls were made on behalf of the Liberal party,” Del Mastro said.
“I see that they used this company quite a bit. It seems that they were robodialing quite a number of people on behalf of the Liberal party.”

Unfortunately for Mr Creosote, it was immediately pointed out he had confused the name of a US firm with the completely unrelated but identically named Canadian one used by the Libs, but no matter : Corporate Television Vehicle ran with it anyway.  RoboComplicity.

Still, you can see why the Cons instinctively turned to their the-Libs-do-it-too defence. 
However clownish, it was a pre-emptive strike to protect their robodialing ReformAlliance/Mike Harris/Republican buddies at RMG, which worked on 97 individual Conservative candidate campaigns in the last election after a 2010 merger with Xentel under IMarketing Solutions Group :

Conservative call centre company has checkered legal history in U.S. 

The company that handles the Conservative Party’s computerized voter-identification system and powerful fundraising machine has a checkered legal history in the United States, where it operates call centres that have repeatedly been the subject of lawsuits and complaints over its telemarketing practices.

Longtime key Conservative organizer Stewart Braddick is listed on RMG’s web site as director of the company’s Focused Direct Response program. Braddick is also listed as director, Focused Direct Response, for the American company Target Outreach Inc., which works for Republican campaigns.

The Cons think they are playing us for suckers. They think we're all rubes, that we won't get it, that we'll put up with their imported Rovian Republican tactics. So - are we rubes? Are we going to let them get away with it this time?

Last word on this goes to Nixon Watergate dirty trickster Donald Segretti, yesterday.
His assessment? : "Worse than Watergate."

“We never tried to do something that would, at the end of the day, take away the right of somebody to vote,” he said. “That goes beyond a prank. It’s just wrong, on many levels.” 

Their dirty tricks campaign, Mr. Segretti claimed, was designed to disrupt the Democrats, not hoodwink voters."

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