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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Duffy-Cons of Canada - they're just not ready

... in their own words.

Bumped from comments ;-) :

Kev : "I'm sure Harper rejects that "rendition of the facts ' as well"

Boris : "Kev, oh, their rendition of the facts tends to be extraordinary. There's a vault in the Turks and Caicos where they lock them up. It's full of papers and reports from government scientists, scandalous emails, models of the solar system, a globe, post-cold war maps of the world, the Constitution Act 1982, a photo of PET, a CBC logo, a UN logo, a census long form, Harper's economics degree, IPCC reports, submitted questions from the newsmedia, and so on. It's guarded by 23 year old PMO interns in shorts and blue golf shirts, and knee socks. Cabinet ministers periodically fly down to beat them up and scream at them. The facts I mean, and maybe the interns, come to think of it."
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The Duffy Tarsands Diaries

Never mind the Senate vagaries on where Duffy actually resides or whether other Senators  porking out at the public trough is criminal or just Senate-business-as-usual. Forget all that.  
Of the various narratives emerging from the Duffy trial, the story that should be getting a lot more attention is that Con Party fundraiser Senator Mike Duffy appears to have served as a behind-the-scenes go-between between Enbridge and Stephen Harper while simultaneously connecting up environmental charities attack dog Vivian Krause, referred to by Ezra Levent as Sun TV's "forensic environmental detective", for an energy sector speaking tour.

National Observer : Redacted diary reveals oil's hidden route to Harper :

"Redacted entries in Mike Duffy’s diary suggest he was in regular undisclosed contact with pipeline giant Enbridge during the height of the federal government's scorching attacks on environmental activists and charities in 2012.

The suspended senator’s journal shows a flurry of conversations and emails with or about top-level Enbridge executives, then PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright and the Prime Minister between January and June of 2012, just as the National Energy Board started its hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal."

CBC : "Duffy appears to be a fan of Krause's work, mentioning her at least 10 times in his daily diary and setting her up with an agent for speaking appearances."

Setting her up with an agent?
According to Krause, speaking fees for appearances before the resources industry now comprises over 90% of her income going back to 2012.

So what else we got on PMO/tarsands-related events which took place during just the first month of the Duffy Diaries' January to June 2012 time period.

January 6, 2012 G&M : Foreign money could gum up pipeline approval, Harper warns.

"The Prime Minister is threatening to prevent foreign environmental interests from delaying the approval of a pipeline that would take bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the West Coast for shipment to Asian markets.

Kathryn Marshall, a spokesperson for EthicalOil.org. said Canadians have much at stake in the construction of the pipeline and “must take a stand against foreigners and their lobbying groups interfering in our decision.”

Cue Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall that same month with her "foreign special interests and their deep pocket puppets" :

"I'm just a student with a website", said Kathryn,whose husband Hamish Marshall was former manager of strategic planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, and whose company Go Newclear Productions, created and hosted websites for Ethical Oil and Con MPs Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney.

DeSmog Blog : Friends with Benefits: The Harper Government, EthicalOil.org and Sun Media Connection

Ethical Oil of course bragged about lobbying the Canada Revenue Agency for Krause-tagged audits of environmental charities critical of tarsands development. In the 2012 budget, the Canada Revenue Agency launched a special $8M program aimed at punishing environmental political activity, later topped up to $13.4 million.

On January 8, 2012,  Duffy's diary notes an email and phone call exchange with Ethical Oil author and SunNews *personality* Ezra Levant  "re: Vivian Krause". He then met with Krause on three occasions and had two telephone conversations.

On February 9, 2012 Krause testified before the Standing Committee on Natural Resources about "deep-pocketed supporters south of the border" funding campaigns against the Canadian energy sector.  Duffy was in attendance; his diary that day reads: "Lunch - Vivian Krause."

And just for lulz ...February 10, 2012 : Star :  Harper speaks from China: PM blasts foreign money in oilands debate while welcoming China   

Also Feb.10 : The G&M, the Star, and Vancouver Observer all carry stories about environmentalists being understandably pissed at being lumped in with white supremacists among the listed "issue-based" terrorist threats in Canada's new counter-terrorism strategy -   Building Resilience Against Terrorism :

"...domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."

It's not like that's gone away. An RCMP report released this February raved on about “violent anti-petroleum extremists” and  “violent aboriginal extremists,” driven by an “anti-petroleum ideology." Particularly concerning in light of the new Anti-terrorism Bill C-51 with its new engorged mandate to act against “activity that undermines the security of Canada”, the RCMP report suggests pipeline opposition movements should be seen and treated as national criminal security threats. It is 44 pages long. To back up its position, a full nine of those pages, or 20% of the entire report, are quotes from articles by Vivian Krause.

And finally the PMO/Enbridge/Duffy connection in the diary : 

Feb.17, 2012 - “PM asks “Send me a note on Enbridge Line #9 problems” 

Good on National Observer, local Vancouver Observer now gone National, for looking beneath the redacting pencil in the Duffy diaries to publish these PMO/Enbridge/Duffy/Krause/Ezra connections.

Update : Our Oily Media - Media critic CanadaLand interviews National Observer founder Linda Solomon Wood on how the energy sector has flooded Canada's media with money, be it in ad dollars, speaking fees, charitable donations or "native content" partnerships. Rex. Mansbridge. PostMedia-CAPP partnership.

Btw, CBC, I see the pro-tarsands astroturf group "British Columbians for Prosperity" is still going strong in its campaign against the deep pockets of "foreign special interests". Is your frequent commentator Alise Mills still running the show at BC4P, as she told Vancouver Observer a year ago?

Good news - Bruce Livesey, canned from Global for his spiked report on the Koch brothers' influence in Canada, has joined National Observer and will rework the story there.

May 7 Update : National Observer : Duffy connected charity critic to lucrative industry cash

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Nigel Wright & Linda Frum in the Republican wayback machine

In a week that has featured ...

1) Nigel Wright let off the hook by the RCMP for bribing sitting legislator Senator Mike Duffy in spite of weeks of PMO discussions involving over a dozen senior party officials re buying Duffy's silence,    and 

2) Senator Linda Frum making the most idiotic and widely-mocked attack on Elections Canada over the Fair Elections Act to date, ie  that it is a conflict of interest for Elections Canada to both administer the vote during elections and encourage people to vote between elections, 

... it is fitting that Jay Watts III should dig up a piece of Canadian history that includes both Frum and Wright, as blogged by Brian Busby in a brilliant pair of blogposts that really should be savoured in their own right.

Seems in 1984, a rightwing Republican foundation confirmed it was funding several start-up campus publications in Canada among its 69 across North America. The Institute of Educational Affairs was set up by Irving Kristol, godfather of the US neoconservative movement, his fellow founding PNACer William Bennett, and William Simon, Reaganite, Richard Nixon's treasury secretary and board director of Halliburton Canada. It bankrolled : 

~ University of Toronto Magazine, founded by Nigel Wright - already working in Muldoon's PMO - and his friend and classmate Tony "Gazebo" Clement, and
~ McGill Magazine and editor Linda Frum, daughter of CBC's Barbara Frum and sister to David "Axis of Evil" Frum
~ Libertas at Queens, run by the son of the CEO at the Bank of Montreal. 
The original Canadian University Press article says 7 other clones of Libertas appeared across Canadian campuses that month, including articles of *unusual access* for campus papers - like an interview with George Bush.

Nigel Wright told the Montreal Gazette at the time that he had "no misgivings about applying for and accepting money from the Republican foundation".

The only advice he could recall receiving from the foundation was a circular "suggesting we publish nothing to do with the John Birch Society."

 Right-wing paper covertly funded from US , also published as Republicans fund Ontario & Quebec right wing newspaper :

"We were happy to have help and advice from the Americans," said Nigel Wright. 

In 1982 the IEA and American Spectator, a prominent conservative newspaper, held a seminar for college students interested in starting or maintaining conservative newspapers. More than 40 students attended to hear speakers such as the Spectator's R. Emett Tyrell Jr lecture on taste and strategy. 

"Don't print Klu Klux Klan literature," Tyrell advised. 

IEA Executive Director Phillip Marcus suggested: "If someone accuses you of being racist or sexist, accuse them back of McCarthy tactics." 

One person contacted who attended that conference but asked not to be identified said: "They told me that when I was ready to go ahead publishing, I shouldn't worry about the money. They said they'd take care of that."

From such smug little acorns are whole governments sprouted, along with their bent senators and chiefs of staff and covert bribes and Republican-style voter suppression bills.
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Ap27 Update : While we don't know whether Linda Frum attended the 1982 RepucliCon newspaper start-up seminar that advised accusing opponents of McCarthy tactics, Jay Watts III discovered her doing exactly that in the Montreal Gazette in 1984.
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A message from the RCMP

CBC : Nigel Wright won't face charges over $90K payment to Mike Duffy 

The RCMP has ended its probe into Nigel Wright... 

Wright said in a statement to CBC News that he believed his actions were in the public interest and lawful.

"My intention was to secure the repayment of taxpayer funds," Wright said through his lawyer, Peter Mantas. He added that the RCMP's "detailed and thorough investigation has now upheld my position."

Quite the most brazen in self-serving nonsense -- the Senate certainly had no difficulty garnisheeing Senator Patrick Brazeau's wages in order to "secure the repayment of taxpayer funds".

Presumably the RCMP could not show that Wright stood to personally benefit from paying off Duffy to shut him up, while Steve, on behalf of whom this charade was perpetrated, knew nothing at all about it .

Well played all round in the best democracy money can buy.  
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Perrin Emails Found Behind Couch!

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 "We are good to go from the PM once Ben [Perrin] has confirmation from [Mr. Duffy’s lawyer]" would seem to be a good place to start.

PMO recovers ex-legal adviser’s e-mails on Duffy affair

Senate scandal: Benjamin Perrin's PMO emails not deleted

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Senate shits the bed, goes back to sleep

Last night's CBC At Issue panel, Nov.28 2013 on the Senate blocking a witness and the PMO continuing to run the Senate. Former Harper supporter Andrew Coyne is beyond disgusted. 

Mansbridge : The government blocks a key witness [Michael Runia, Managing Partner at Deloitte] from appearing before a senate committee to answer questions about whether he had tried to massage or even question the firm's audit of Mike Duffy's expenses.

Andrew Coyne : It's incredible. Step back from this. This is the auditing firm Deloitte that does the audits for the Conservative fundraising arm; they are also the recipient of millions of dollars in federal contracts. They are given this contract to investigate Mike Duffy's expenses by the Tory-dominated committee and there's all kinds of interference reported in the RCMP doc where they're calling them up to ask them how it's going; they're trying to influence it; Duffy's not talking to them et cetera.
At the centre of it is this fellow Michael Runia, who was the point man, the contact with Senator [Irving] Gerstein. We hear during today's testimony from the three auditors involved in the audit, he was in fact making these very inappropriate phone calls - they had to cut him off.

Just when you think ok that's the next step -clearly they'll call him as the next witness - they have a vote and vote not to call him. It's staggering. You cannot believe they would be that brazen about it."

No?  It was the last act on the last day in office before retirement for Gerald Comeau, Con chair of the Senate's internal economy committee, a position he was hastily shoehorned into following the departure of the former disgraced chair, David Tkachuk. Comeau shepherded his little Senate flock into voting against a motion to even hear from Gerstein's contact at Deloitte, longtime Con supporter and Deloitte partner Michael Runia.

Flashback to early March ...

PMO Manager of Parliamentary Affairs Patrick Rogers on March 8, as per the RCMP ITO: 

"Senator Gerstein has just called. He agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact [Runia] agrees. The stage we 're at now is waiting for the Senator's contact to get the actual Deloitte auditor on the file to agree. The Senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in."

Then, 13 days later on March 21, Patrick Rogers makes a prediction weeks before the Deloitte audit is sent to the Senate [bold : mine]: 

"Deloitte can 't reach a conclusion on residency because lawyer has not provided them anything. This is despite their attempts use "public information" about residency. Their report will state that lawyer did not provide information when requested. They were asked to complete the work by the end of March and plan to.

I would propose that the Senator [Duffy] continue to not engage with Deloitte. I believe that we should make arrangements for repayment knowing that Deloitte will not say one way or another on his residency. If asked following the report why he did not participate with Deloitte the Senator [Duffy] can say because he had already made the decision to repay the money and as he said at the time, he looked forward to moving on. It is then up to our esteemed Senators on the committee and our Senate leadership to move on.

And voilà - everything Patrick Rogers predicted before the Deloitte report was tabled came true and the "esteemed senators" are indeed desperately trying to "move on", including refusing to hear witnesses in the Senate, after first having Writewashed the Deloitte audit.

Mansbridge : We should mention that in the end, nothing was done to the Audit. There was no inappropriate ... the ethical wall wasn't breached.

Coyne, somewhat snidely : So Deloitte says.

Exactly.


It was Steve's PMO legal counsel Benjamin Perrin who asked Senator Irving Gerstein to work his contacts at Deloitte over the audit. Perrin returned to his job teaching law at UBC in April after all his emails in the PMO were erased, according to the RCMP.

PMO staffer Patrick "This is epic. Montgomery is the Problem" Rogers has since been removed from the immediate line of fire to Heritage Minister Shelly Glover's office.

Senator Irving Gerstein is still sitting in the Senate and is still in charge of the Conservative Fund Canada. When questioned about his bagman's leading role in all this, Steve - the Accountability Firewall Guy continues to refuse to say his name out loud in Parliament. 

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Steve - the Accountability Firewall Guy

2006 Conservative Party Campaign Ad on Accountability

Interviewer : How is it that hundreds of millions of dollars go missing and no one's in jail?
Harper : Well, look who's in charge. I mean these guys can't even tell the difference between Wright and wrong. 

Interviewer : Ok, we've got a question ... "It's like you get to Ottawa and no one can touch you. How will you change that?"
Harper : You change the people in charge but you also have to change the system. The first thing I'll do is pass the Federal Accountability Act. It's a real plan to clean up government.

Now : Tory changes to accountability rules leave Harper blameless in Duffy affair

When the Conservatives first took power in 2006, Accountable Government: A Guide for Ministers and Secretaries of State said that ministers were responsible for “the actions of all officials under their management and direction, whether or not the ministers had prior knowledge.” ***

But a version of the guidelines from 2011 says: “Ministerial accountability to Parliament does not mean that a minister is presumed to have knowledge of every matter that occurs within his or her department or portfolio, nor that the minister is necessarily required to accept blame for every matter.”

Whew - lucky for Steve, huh? 
Six of his own closest staffers he hired himself - staffers we did not elect and who are not answerable to us - variously colluded in a plot the RCMP allege involved bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust, all while supposedly managing to keep Steve completely out of the loop about it. And according to the revised Accountability Act rules, that isn't his responsibility! 

Presumably this also explains Steve's new mantra in the House of Commons when questioned about the actions of any of those staffers : "There are only two people under investigation."

"Not actually a convicted felon" - it's the new standard for the Federal Accountability Act.


*** The Cons worked this first version to avoid accountability also.
In 2010 - back when parliamentary committees actually worked - the Ethics Committee was investigating  "allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public" by political staffers. 
[In those days it was still considered an anomaly to have hired shortpantsers running the government.]
i.e. A gov dept would authorize the release of a document to the public and a Con political staffer would be sent down to retrieve it before it could be released. 
When said staffers were summoned before committees as witnesses to be questioned about it, John Baird or Pierre Poilievre would show up in their place under the guise of "ministerial responsibility for staffers" and run interference on the staffer's behalf.
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Senate scandal : the missing emails

Here's RCMP Cpl. Greg Horton explaining why he does not have access to the emails of Stephen Harper's personal PMO legal counsel Ben Perrin who handled the negotiations for the Duffy/Wright cheque deal with Duffy's lawyer Janice Payne:

I was advised that the e-mails of Benjamin Perrin were no longer available because he completed his tenure at the PMO in April 2013.

The emails were deleted mere weeks after they were written and a month before the Duffy deal went public because, as it happens, that's apparently standard practice for a departing employee.

How is that even credible?

Harper's dcomm Jason MacDonald explains : 

"Under the guidelines the Treasury Board has, the individual is required to distinguish between what should be considered a permanent document that should be preserved and what's a transitory document, as they call it, and can be deleted, and the onus is on the individual to make that distinction."

So it was up to Perrin to decide what to delete? Really?

Former HoC law clerk Rob Walsh :

"I just don't understand how any regime regarding documentation relating to an employee who is departing can leave it to the departing employee to decide which documents shall remain available to the employer and which shall not. I just don't understand it."

It seems quite mad really, as it could theoretically encourage the practice of hiring shortpantsers on the taxpayers' dime, after which all written evidence of whatever nefarious schemes they were asked to perpetrate could be erased. 

Law prof Amir Attaran has laid a complaint of professional misconduct with the law societies of BC and Ontario re Perrin and Payne, and also he raises this important point :

Horton writes that that the prime minister’s office waived solicitor-client privilege for those emails. That doesn’t mean that the prime minister has also waived privilege, Attaran points out. “The wording of the ITO is that PMO has waived privilege, not that the PM has.”
That may be relevant, he said, because Perrin may have had a “joint retainer,” meaning that he may have had both the office and the prime minister as his clients.

Perrin is mentioned over 30 times in the allegations of the RCMP affidavit, and while Horton states Perrin was not involved in Wright's decision to cut Duffy a cheque, these excerpts give an indication of what we might be missing in Perrin's missing emails :

Nigel Wright decided that he would personally cover the cost of reimbursing Senator Duffy. After back and forth negotiations between Janice Payne and Benjamin Perrin (legal counsel within the PMO) terms of the agreement were set.

Mr. Perrin became involved after the February 19, 2013, exchange when Senator Duffy asked for the name of a legal representative who his lawyer could communicate with. Thereinafter, Janice Payne and Benjamin Perrin communicated on this matter; Mr. Perrin was aware of Mr. Wright's personal decision to pay the money, but was in no way involved in the decision. 

Mr. Wright was not happy with Senator Duffy, and was no longer wishing to debate the matter. He told Senator Duffy that from that point on they will deal lawyer to lawyer on the matter (Payne and Perrin);

On February 21, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin requesting media lines
On February 21, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin with a list of 5 conditions or demands Benjamin Perrin followed up with an e-mail to Nigel Wright advising that Janice Payne wanted the agreement in writing, and stated, "I explained that was not happening. We aren't selling a car or settling a lawsuit here. She seemed to get it eventually."

On March 1, Janice Payne e-mailed Benjamin Perrin for an update on Senator Duffy being withdrawn from the Deloitte audit.

On March 5, Janice Payne e-mailed Benjamin Perrin and Arthur Hamilton (Conservative Party lawyer) seeking advice.

On March 20, after sending an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin and Arthur Hamilton about the Deloitte process, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Senator Tkachuk seeking confirmation that the audit would be called off upon repayment.

On March 23, Janice Payne e-mailed Benjamin Perrin and stated: "Ben, yesterday we discussed the Senator sending a cheque to Deloitte with a letter explaining our position that the ongoing review should now be moot. I am preparing such a letter." She then sent Mr. Perrin a draft of the letter she intended to send to Deloitte, and solicited comments from Mr. Perrin and Nigel Wright.

Nigel Wright responded to Benjamin Perrin: think that this is perfectly fine (and I resist making minor suggestions since I would prefer to be able to answer, if necessary, that PMO did not write it)

In an earlier e-mail to Benjamin Perrin, Nigel Wright stated: think her approach works. I will send my cheque on Monday.

On March 24, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin stating that Senator Duffy . .. asks for assurance that should any Senator seek his removal, the Gov 't leader in the Senate will urge her caucus to vote against such a motion

On March 26, Benjamin Perrin received an e-mail from Janice Payne's office stating "we have just sent the cheque to Senator Tkachuk by courier".

And then Mr. Perrin, along with all his emails, was gone.  Image from CTV.

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Dec 2 Update : Well, wouldn't you know it? They'd just fallen down the back of the couch.
Dec 5 Update : ITO contains 24 references to PMO legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin, dating from the time Mr. Wright began arranging a plan to end the controversy over Sen. Duffy’s expenses until it was completed.
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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..

Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #8

Please welcome Senator Irving Gerstein, chief Con bagman and in-and-out election scheme perp, to Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks for what the Mounties allege was his role in trying to kill off the Deloitte audit into the expenses of Mike Duffy.

At a Con Party meet earlier this month, Gerstein announced to the party faithful :

“First, I made it absolutely clear to Nigel Wright that the CFC [Conservative Fund Canada] would not pay for Senator Mike Duffy’s disputed expenses,” the Ontario senator said.
“And it never did.”

Having the Con Fund pay off Duffy's expenses had actually been the PMO plan all along; Nigel Wright paying them instead was merely a later variation on that plan when the amount was three times what they expected. 

More serious is the attempt out of the PMO to muscle the Senate into shutting down the Deloitte audit using "back channels", and to hide it from the public and the RCMP with the complicity of Senators Stewart Olsen, LeBreton, and Tkachuk, all of whom previously publicly stated they knew nothing about doing a deal with a number of PMO staffers to change an audit, whitewash their reports on it, and hide the Duffy money trail. 

PMO staffer Patrick Rogers on March 8, from the RCMP ITO : 

"Senator Gerstein has just called. He agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact agrees. The stage we’re at now is waiting for the senator’s contact to get the actual Deloitte auditor on the file to agree. The senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in."

Harper continued to deny in QP yesterday that he knew anything at all about the actions of all these people he personally hired for the PMO or appointed to the Senate. 
The RCMP ITO notes there is "no evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister was personally involved in the minutiae of those matters", and Nigel Wright has also said Harper was unaware of the specific details.

So what. That's what the six people in the PMO wrangling out those specific details were for.

The Perps with Perks Virtual Boxed Set ... with perp bios .. to be continued...
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #7

Welcome, Con chief counsel Arthur Hamilton, to Perps with Perks for your part in the Senate scandal - Wrighting a cheque to Mike Duffy's lawyer -  "CON FUNDS $13,560" - while Duffy was under investigation to pay off his legal bills and shut him up so as not to arouse the Wrath of Cons.
"Cheque(s)" actually because we haven't yet seen the other Hamilton cheque stub Duffy mentioned last week, along with all the other paperwork the PMO assured CBC doesn't exist.

About that CON FUND mentioned on Hamilton's cheque - flashback to 2011 re the Cons' in-and-out scheme when Hamilton was counsel for that too.

"There were six people in charge of the Conservative Fund. Four are now charged. Nigel Wright is the fifth, and while two of them were rewarded with plush Senate seats, he's the chief of staff to the Prime Minister."

Previously, Hamilton is best known to us for ignoring Elections Canada entreaties to look into Con election fraud events perped in the days just prior to the last election, taking months to set up interviews with witnesses in Elections Canada's Guelph robocall investigation, and pre-empting the witnesses' lawyers when they finally got underway under his supervision.
To quote federal court judge Richard Mosley in the legal challenge alleging widespread voter suppression in the last federal election, the Cons, represented by Hamilton, "engaged in trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits."

Yesterday we heard Steve on the radio saying he'd "dismissed" Nigel Wright. 
What a long ways we've come from the Con story in May when "good Samaritan" Wright was only trying to protect taxpayers by writing a cheque for his good ole buddy Duffy. Steve was "very clear" he knew nothing at all about it and "immediately made this information public" after CTV had already reported it. Heh. 
Steve then "accepted Wright's resignation with regret".
Now Steve says he fired Wright and "a few" people in the PMO were in the know - 13 according to Robert Fife. 

So it seems the Con Party chief counsel Arthur Hamilton was in on it from the very beginning, unless of course Hamilton had no idea why he was writing the cheque to Duffy out of the Con Fund.
Maybe, like Steve, no one ever tells him anything either. 
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Previous Perps with Perks with bios.

Mon evening update : Thinking about Steve's recent indignant law and order rhetoric re Duffy - presumably for the benefit of his base prior to their annual national convention next week. The delicious irony here is now he has to explain to them why their party donations were used to pay off the legal bills Duffy incurred due to PMO-directed Senate investigations against him.
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Senate scandal : questions and more questions

According to Duffy, the PMO blackmailed him into taking a bribe to save his own skin and that of the Cons from the wrath of their base.

Questions ...
Senators Duffy and Mockler with PM - Oct 17, 2012 / PMO handout

It seems no amount of $90K carrots or Senate expulsion sticks were spared to shut down that Duffy Deloitte senate audit. Where was it going that was ultimately worth the risk of what's coming out now- the PMO conferring an illegal under-the-table bribe on a sitting senator and then trying to cover it up?

When CBC applied for access to docs and emails re the Wright/Duffy payoff, there were apparently none to be had. None. Yet Duffy seems to have his end of that same correspondence. If those emails had in any way corroborated Steve's story that he had nothing to do with Wright writing Duffy a cheque, do you think for one moment they wouldn't have been pasted up at Sun News already?

On Tuesday Duffy's lawyer waved around a few of the "mountain" of those supposedly non-existant emails and read out excerpts, calling them "the tip of the iceberg" . He claimed the emails were "germaine" to Steve's involvement but would not release them, saying they would come out in the event Duffy was hauled into court. Was that a threat?

Because when Duffy told his side of the story yesterday, it stopped just shy of definitively placing Steve in the cheque-writing loop. Was there a quiet conversation after Duffy's lawyer's statement but before Duffy's that resulted in Duffy holding back on what his lawyer alluded to the day before? 

Steve looked pretty confident in QP yesterday, restricting his answers to twenty Duffy questions by extolling his own personal ethical rectitude for dumping Duffy. 
Duffy had said the day before that Steve's senior aide Ray Novak and Senator LeBreton called him in May and ordered him to resign.  Mulcair questioned Novak's involvement and Steve denied it, based on Wright not having named Novak as one of the 3 PMO staffers who knew about the cheque.  But unfortunately for Steve, Pamela Wallin had elected to wait till after QP to give her statement in the Senate in which she too said Novak and LeBreton called her in May demanding she resign. 
Will Steve's recently promoted personal friend Novak be next to go under the Con bus?

And lastly, remember for a few days after May 14 when the Con story was that Nigel Wright was just helping out his dear 'friend' Duffy and selflessly taking a personal financial hit for the benefit of Canadian taxpayers?  Then Nigel Wright resigned, saying Duffy was not his friend and exonerating Steve of any knowledge of the $90,000 cheque on his way out the door. Mr. Wright, who will presumably be returning to the fold at Onex after his investigation by the RCMP, pretty much owns Steve now, doesn't he?
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