"F-bomb shows lack of judgement"

says the PMO : "This is yet another example of Justin Trudeau's lack of judgement."

         Well alrighty then.

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Your daily Senate shenanigans

Today the Senate voted 51- 30 against having Deloitte partner Michael Runia testify about Senator Irving Gerstein's phone call to Runia amid PMO interference in Deloitte's audit into Senator Duffy.

Background : 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."

All the Con senators voted against hearing from Runia because as one explained ... wait for it ... "it might interfere with an ongoing police investigation."

Con Senator Vern White, former Ottawa police chief : "The timing is wrong right now."

Ok, Senators, what is it the right time for then?

Senate plans to probe CBC operations

"The Senate is planning a comprehensive review of the CBC's role in Canadian society, examining how it has used billions of dollars in government subsidies received over the years.

With the Senate’s credibility on the line due to the ongoing spending scandal, Dawson explained that all senators had extra motivation to deliver a well-researched review."

Bonus Senate bs : Earlier today, Senator Gerstein, chair of the Senate banking committee, ruled "out of order" a request that he step down as chair of the Senate banking committee.

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Thursday update : Harper rejects calls for Parliament to hear more from Duffy witnesses

"Stephen Harper says there’s no need to hear an explanation from a Deloitte auditor who allegedly intervened in an independent audit into Mike Duffy’s expenses at the behest of the Conservatives’ top fundraiser and the Prime Minister’s Office."

Senate scandal : A cover-up in broad daylight.
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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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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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It's a small small small Con world

Top Conservative party operative says she didn’t know of plan to cover Duffy expense tab, reads the headline. 

Nor did she speak to Nigel Wright or Senator Gerstein about it apparently.

That top party op is Pierre Poilievre's ex, Jenni Byrne - Conservative Party director of political operations, national Con campaign director during the 2011 election, and Steve's once and perhaps future director of issues management in the PMO.

But then when you read the article, it turns out to be the Con Party spokesy Fred DeLorey answering all the reporter's questions on Byrne's behalf by email. Nothing directly from Byrne and no follow-up questions.

Mr. DeLorey, you may recall, also initially denied that the Cons were behind the January robocall pushpoll in Saskatchewan regarding electoral riding redistricting, while Poilievre, who once founded a robocall company of his own, said they were done by Chase Research. Eventually Chase Research was outed for having done the calls on behalf of the Cons as an affiliate of RackNine, the company used by Pierre Poutine to make the election fraud robocalls in Guelph.

For her part, Jenni Byrne denied the Cons had anything to do with the Guelph robocall election fraud, issuing an email to say that the Cons ran "a clean and ethical campaign", notwithstanding they had to fire Patrick Muttart from their election war room after he sent Jenni Byrne's close friend SunNews CEO Kory Teneycke that bogus Iggy war photo.

But back to the article. 
Commenters below it point out the obvious - the unlikelihood of the Con Party director of political operations knowing nothing about a PMO/Con Party plan to bribe a sitting senator causing them headaches for his silence. 
Three comments are the angry rebuttals of one commenter, William Donaldson.  
While he has every right to his defence of Ms Byrne, is this the same Bill Donaldson who was Pierre Poilievre's first campaign manager and Nepean-Carleton EDA president back in 2006 under Manager of Political Operations for Ontario, Jenni Byrne? [fourth link down marked DOC]

It's a small small small Con world. 
Pull on any Duffy/Senate/election fraud thread and the same names come up over and over again.
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