RoboCon CREEPshow trial of Michael Sona

At left is the draft statement robocall trial star witness and Guelph Con campaign worker Andrew Prescott sent to the accused, Michael Sona, in July 2013.
Read it first.  Really.

Three freaking years later and three days into the CREEPshow trial charging Michael Sona with sending robocalls out to more than 6,000 Guelph voters in the May 2, 2011 federal election directing them to the wrong poll locations, a couple of new things stand out.

It was indeed Andrew Prescott who logged out of his own account at RackNine on election day only to log back in again a few minutes later on the Pierre Jones/Poutine account. He did so on the instructions of Guelph election campaign chair Ken Morgan who gave him a handwitten note with the Poutine credentials. 

So Prescott was Poutine for Morgan in this instance of its use at least. However Prescott has an immunity deal with the Crown to testify against Sona and says he didn't know the significance of the alternate log-in until Sona mentioned "Pierre" later in the day in a toast that Prescott didn't remember until April 2014! 

So why isn't Guelph campaign chair Ken Morgan on trial here? Other than that he decamped to Kuwait in 2012 of course and has never been questioned by Elections Canada afawk. I guess it's a case of love the one you're with here. 

From the robocalls trial twitterfeed of Glen McGregor, Stephen Maher, Globals' Laura Stone, and Laura Payton at CBC. Excerpted  : 

• Prescott says he was in Burke campaign office until the early hours, until sun up, on May 2 (e-day)
• Sona was in his cubicle on that early morning of election day, Prescott says.
• Prescott says Sona asked him about how to log into RackNine after 4:00 am on election day. "I was suspicious," he said [but he complied].
• In February interviews with Elections Canada, Prescott couldn't recall Sona asking about RackNine.

Wait.  If, as per Matt Meier's testimony, the Pierre Poutine account on RackNine was set up on April 30, and if as Prescott is implying - Sona is Poutine, why would Sona be asking Prescott the following morning how to log in to RackNine?

• When sun came up, Prescott says he slept on the couch in the office for a few hours.
• Sona came out of office: "was shaking, ecstatic, and said in a low voice, 'It's working,'" Prescott says. Sona was "quiet, almost euphoric"
• Later, as they heard [from their own supporters telling of calls saying that polling stations were closing early], Ken Morgan came up to Prescott and said "We need to counter this. They're bombing our supporters."

• Then Morgan approached Prescott later day and said "I need you to stop the dial"
• Morgan approached Prescott's desk; Prescott went to RackNine website and found he was logged in.
• "I went to pending calls page and noticed there was a pending dial to go out and I immediately cancelled it," Prescott says.

After the election day vote count, Prescott :

• People were having drinks and cigars, toasting Harper, "MIchael [Sona] had a cigar in his hand and said something like thanks, Pierre, and laughed" 

Interesting because their Guelph campaign had just lost the election so the thanks to "Pierre" would have been about bogus calls made to voters in 200 other ridings that Elections Canada has since completely lost any further interest in.
Also, Prescott says he did not *remember* Sona toasting "Pierre" until April 2014!

Also new and newish :
In Nov. 2011, RackNine CEO Matt Meier gave Prescott a heads up that Elections Canada Al Mathews was looking at Prescott's calls re fake polling station info before Mathews contacted Prescott the same month.
In March 2012, Meier discovered the Poutine IP info and passed it on to EC Al Mathews; he also copied the same data to Con headquarters.  

• Prescott agrees he kept information about Morgan asking him to stop a dialer to himself until immunity deal in 2014. Also withheld re Sona saying "It's working".
• Prescott says he saw a burner phone on Sona's desk and packaging for it in his garbage can. Previous to today, Prescott only mentioned packaging. Says he told EC about burner phone on Sona's desk in second interview with EC that Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton asked not to be recorded.

Prescott's memory of events three years ago has improved a lot over the telling :"The more I thought about it the better my recollections," Prescott said.

• Prescott's computer and campaign computer disc drives all destroyed.
• In Feb this year Prescott offered Ken Morgan help to also get an immunity deal.

Given the appalling quality of his self-absolving testimony, you have to wonder why Prescott was granted immunity. Possibly CPC did not much care for his statement about Nixon dirty tricks (see pic).

Con layer Arthur Hamilton's four pet Hill staffers/interns also testified that Sona bragged to them afterwards about being Poutine and masterminding the whole shebang. Aside from the odd dramatic account of sign-stealing car chases, their accounts contributed nothing that wasn't already public knowledge from the media over the last three years. All very *mostly* lone wolf tv bad boy.

And it's a wrap. Sona not testifying, nor key players Ken Morgan, out of the country; Arthur Hamilton, instumental in setting up the case against Sona; and the frequently mentioned Jenni Byrne, who restricted EC access to witnesses, etc etc.

Pic at top via Laura Stone at Global is "draft statement Prescott read in court when he thought he wouldn't be able to attend CPC convention" because his name was connected to Poutine robocalls .
Note reference to Nixon's CREEP* and "widespread, national, well-organized scheme" and "not the work of any lone staffer". Prescott clarified yesterday his statement refers to national scheme, not Guelph.

OK then.

*CREEP : Richard Nixon's Committee for the Re- Election of the President, of Watergate fame
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Elections Canada throws in the towel

It would be unseemly for a sitting government under the cloud of elections fraud and voter suppression in 200 ridings across the country to ram through the Fair Elections Act mainly benefitting themselves, so today Elections Canada Commissioner Yves Côté obligingly threw in the towel on any further investigation into what Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley called :

"an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person or persons with access to the CIMS database" 

Commissioner Côté :

"... it is not sufficient to find evidence of misdirection of an elector. There must be evidence of intention to prevent the elector from voting, or by some pretence or contrivance, to induce the elector to vote or not vote for a particular candidate.

"No such evidence was found."

Skippy was pleased though : 

"Pierre Poilievre, the minister for democratic reform, said the report proves the Conservative party ran "an honest and ethical campaign" in 2011.

"We followed all of the rules and we won fair and square," Poilievre said Thursday before delivering a speech on controversial new electoral reforms proposed for the 2015 vote.

"That is what we've been saying all along and those who've been making baseless smears ever since have been once again proven wrong in the process."

Not that the Office of the Commissioner has shown much previous inclination to pursue evidence of election fraud in the last election, but his report shows he was hampered by "investigative challenges", due to "outright refusal to cooperate" on the part of witnesses. 
Supreme Court Justice Louise Charron : "Some telemarketers retained by political parties simply refused to co-operate."
Unsurprisingly, the new Fair Elections Act declines to give him the power to compel witnesses.

So here is an example of what is presumably now legal in our new 'buyer beware' elections - a "misdirection of an elector" from Election Day in 2011, left on the phone of a librarian :



I'll save you the bother of looking up that phone number - it's Pierre Poutine.

Saskboy did an excellent rundown on the issues this morning and -updated- RossK reminds this is all just a redo of EC declining to pursue election fraud in SGI in 2008.
Back with more in a bit.

Update : So what exactly happened between an EC spokesey giving a completely bullshit reason 3 weeks ago for why their report would not be released until after the next election and its release today? 
Is it a different report altogether? 

Benson said the agency has decided not to report until after the next election. 

“In light of the government’s announcement in the fall that it would introduce comprehensive legislative reform, Elections Canada decided to postpone the general enforcement report until after the next general election,” she said. “This was necessary not only to focus our attention and resources on the announced reform, but also of the difficulty of engaging stakeholders simultaneously on a parallel initiative.”

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Another reason to fight the Fair Elections Act

Duff Conacher, Founder of Democracy Watch, on the Fair Elections Act. 
Democracy Watch has a list of "10 really unfair measures in the so-called 'Fair Elections Act' " and a letter you can send to federal leaders here. C'mon, guys, surely we can do better than just 36,000 letters.  

The Cons' contention that the universally negative response to their Bill C-23 is uninformed and hysterical took a big hit today when former AG Sheila Fraser weighed in : 

Ex-watchdog Sheila Fraser slams bill as attack on democracy

'It's just astounding to me,' former auditor-general says of Tories' proposed election law overhaul

"Elections are the base of our democracy and if we do not have truly a fair electoral process and one that can be managed well by a truly independent body, it really is an attack on our democracy..."

Ok, on to my point ...

Fraser has a similar list of complaints to Conacher and also mentions another shortcoming I haven't seen much discussed - that the chief electoral officer will now have to seek prior Treasury Board approval to enter into contracts with people with specialized or technical knowledge.

In June 2011, EC investigator Alan Mathews was looking for Pierre Poutine among VOIPs and proxy servers - a field he knew nothing about. As he said in his ITO : "I relied upon [Simon] Rowland, a subject matter expert in the area of call center systems, telemessaging and telecom product development and network engineering." 

That subject matter expert was the one who provided this analysis : 

"So it's not just what was reported so far -- that the Poutine account and Prescott account were accessed by the same IP within 4 minutes of each other during the middle of this night. It's also that on three separate occasions, someone with both the Prescott and Poutine account passwords used the same browser window to log into both accounts."

I'm guessing if Elections Canada had had to go cap in hand to Tony Gazebo at the Treasury Board for permission to hire that guy and his "specialized or technical knowledge", it never would have been approved and we never would have heard anything about it.

‘Pierre Poutine’ robocalls case: Prescott has given evidence about Michael Sona, Ken Morgan 

and it ain't pretty but catch the explosive end of the McMaher piece :

A national investigation into allegations of dirty political calls has been under way for more than a year. Elections Canada had planned to wrap up that investigation by March 31. On Thursday, spokeswoman Diane Benson declined to say whether it is ongoing.

That report has been postponed until after the 2015 election because of the introduction of the Conservatives’ election bill.
The agency would not say when if ever it will report on the national robocalls investigation.

Friday 11am update : This morning the above McMaher story was changed in the two slightly different versions previously posted at NaPo and canada.com. and is only slightly less explosive.
The NaPo one, listing only Maher, now currently reads :

A national investigation into allegations of dirty political calls has been under way for more than a year. Elections Canada had planned to wrap up that investigation by March 31. On Thursday, spokeswoman Diane Benson declined to say whether it is ongoing.

The agency was expected to include information about that investigation in a “compliance and enforcement mechanisms” report to Parliament this spring.

Benson said the agency has decided not to report until after the next election.
“In light of the government’s announcement in the fall that it would introduce comprehensive legislative reform, Elections Canada decided to postpone the general enforcement report until after the next general election,” she said. “This was necessary not only to focus our attention and resources on the announced reform, but also of the difficulty of engaging stakeholders simultaneously on a parallel initiative.”

while the McMaher one on canada.com goes : 

An Elections Canada report on “compliance and enforcement mechanisms” that was scheduled for this spring has been postponed until after the 2015 election because of the introduction of the Conservatives’ election bill.

That report had been expected to include information on the national robocalls investigation. On Thursday, a spokesman for the agency would not say when any report on that investigation would be released.

 

with thanks to Salamander in comments for the updated version.

As deBeauxOs says : It's #Harper's Fraudulent Voting Reform Act, another #CON!

Friday update :From yesterday: Trapped in a Whirlpool : Parliamentary Civil Disobedience. 

To the Opposition : Go big or go home, stand up for Canadians or be judged harshly by history.

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Camelot Security Establishment: "It's only a model"

Michael Byers makes a good case that Canada's military procurement is like a Monty Python movie, akin to "a knight riding a make-believe horse while knocking two coconuts together."

Also rather like the dead parrot sketch but he missed the most obvious Python Holy Grail allusion of all  - that DND is building CSEC a massive new $1B home they've nicknamed Camelot.
The Camelot sketch from Holy Grail is one of my all time faves so here it is with updated Camelot Security Establishment lyrics below.  Sing 'em loud!



Knights, I bid you welcome to your new home - let us ride to Camelot.

We're Knights of the CSEC Table
We hack whene'er we're able
We snoop emails and "Search" details
On fibre optic cable.
We dine well here in Camelot
Coz a billion bucks buys quite a lot.

We're Knights of the CSEC Table
Our building's formidable, 
Catching Pierre Poutine is not our scene
That case is unbreakable.
Brazil is mad at Camelot
Coz we sing to NSA a lot.

As spooks we're tough and able
Quite indefatigable.
But Greenwald's leaks on our techniques
Have made things quite unstable.
It's a busy life in Camelot
Appeasing Uncle Sam a lot
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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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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 5

Updated : h/t Canadian Cynic

Welcome Con MPs Devinder Shory, James Bezan, Shelly Glover, and update! House Speaker Andrew Scheer to the growing family scandal of Steve's Parade of Perps with Perks.  

Devinder Shory, Calgary Northeast, accused of providing legal work that supported allegedly fraudulent mortgages - in his case at least five straw-buyer cases of more than $3.7 million:

Promised a payment of up to $8,000, hundreds of straw buyers, mostly new immigrants, allowed their names to be used to obtain falsely inflated mortgages on over 200 properties. When the straw buyers could not pay up, the bank would foreclose and the "masterminds" would walk away, wiring proceeds from the alleged fraud to Lebanon, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. 

[T]he Alberta Lawyers Insurance Association (ALIA) has agreed to pay $9.2 million to BMO to settle the case on behalf of all 17 lawyers named in the suit."

April 28 2014 Update : Two Con candidates hoping to challenge Devinder Shory appear to have had their nomination papers quashed by Dimitri Soudas to protect Shory.

Two years after the election, Elections Canada is still waiting for campaign expenses compliance from Manitoba Con MPs James Bezan and law 'n order gal Shelly Glover regarding documents that put them over the top of their allowed amounts ... just like Perp with Perks veteran Peter Penashue in Labrador. Both Glover and Bezan have filed court applications to prevent their being barred from the House by EC's Marc Mayrand while Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton wrangles their cases.

ETA : Dear Mr. Hamilton : Clawing back campaign staffers' pay a year later in order to get Glover under the spending limit wire in what you refer to as "an honest mistake of fact" seems a bit mean. I also fail to see how having election campaign signs up in places where the traffic is poor disqualifies their existence as, you know, election campaign signs.

Belated addition of House Speaker Andrew Scheer, MP, for sitting on Mayrand's formal letter of May 24 advising him Bezan and Glover were in violation of election law and therefore ineligible to sit in the House. Scheer did not advise the House and the next day Glover filed a court challenge, followed by Bezan. 
We the public of course would not have known about any of this if the media had not dug into it - hats off to Kady and McMaher.

Very good post from Dr.Dawg on whether rule of law still exists if a sitting government can flout it without repercussion. Whether the court finds any mitigating factors in Bezan and Glover's applications or not and regardless of Scheer's eventual ruling, the Cons will claim it a victory and continue on as they like. 

Running out of perp parade room here and the month is yet young ... I'm going to have to start setting out benches at the back for the next batch to stand on.

Previous editions/perps' bios
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 4

Please welcome Senators David Tkachuk, Marjory LeBreton and Carolyn Stewart Olsen to the growing family scandal of Steve's Parade of Perps with Perks.  Click to enjoy.

While Steve is still going with the lone topgun chief of staff on the Duffy knoll with the chequebook story from his temporary hideout in South America, his perps at home are busy fucking that up for him. 

We were most relieved to hear from Senator Tkachuk that even though he was soliciting advice from the Prime Minister's Office on how to do his audit of Duffy, and Nigel Wright was calling him up wanting to know "When is this thing over with?", Senator Tkachuk assures us that "no one came to my room and told me what to do."

Well that's good to know but with Steve's former-press-secretary-now-Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen spearheading the Duffy audit whitewash/rewrite in the steering committee for you, your own room was pretty well always safe, wasn't it? 

That whitewashed audit is now winging its way back to the same perps for further review and Steve's buddy, government leader in the senate Marjory LeBreton, has refused to open the hearings, complaining she lives in a town "populated by Liberal elitists and their lickspittle media” and is not getting enough credit for opening up the senate to Steve's scandal.

Excellent piece on this from Mound of Sound

Updated Perps with Perks and their bios.
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 3

Please welcome Nigel Wright, Steve's chief of staff on loan from Onex Corp and the latest member of Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks, for secretly cutting Mike Duffy a $90,000 personal cheque to paper over the senate investigation and Deloitte audit into Mike Duffy's creative housing expense claims and reports he billed the Senate for travel while campaigning for the Cons .

Duffy isn't co-operating with the investigations now he has the cash but that didn't stop House leader Peter Van Loan from praising him for his "leadership" in returning money that didn't belong to him. 
Duffy : 

"It's become a major distraction so my wife and I discussed it and we decided that in order to turn the page and put all this behind us, we are going to voluntarily pay back the living expenses related to the house we have in Ottawa"

Ah yes the Royal Bank loan and the PMO instruction to keep his little head down.
Unfortunately Duffy then blabbed around town about his secret cheque from Wright.

So which is it then? A bank loan or a personal cheque from Steve's chief of staff? 
Both? Given he purportedly has secured the bank loan to cover the senate repayment, what's the cash bonanza from Nigel Wright for exactly?

“The PM was not aware of the specifics,” Andrew MacDougall, Mr. Harper’s director of communications, has said of this transaction when asked.

I think that's called implausible deniability.

Nigel Wright, a founding director of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, has resigned.
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Updated Perps with perks and their bios.

Arrgh update. Typo correction : That should have been "a founding director"; without that "a", it made him sound like the only one.  Apologies.
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Harper's parade of perps

Notable how many of Steve's patronage peeps are grifters, conmen, or alleged perps .

Starting from the left ... picture updated to include Pierre Poutine and the robocon network [h/t Beijing York in comments] - no charges and no arrests, 21 months and counting... 

Dr. Arthur Porter, "His Excellency, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, Republic of Sierra Leone", also Harper-appointed chair of CSIS watchdog SIRC and lead investigator into CSIS' treatment of Abdelrazik. Money once paid to former Israeli arms trafficker to sell infrastructure deals to Sierra Leone, and now subject of an arrest warrant for fraud, money laundering and bribes/kickbacks in connection with SNC Lavelin's successful bid to build a $1.3-billion hospital in Montreal.
Viv Toews, minister responsible for CSIS and SIRC, says somehow it's the fault of the NDP and Libs.

Senator Mike Duffy, Harper-appointed lollypop, whose very useful 2008 election coverage included running Stephane Dion's three time stumbled interview restarts 5 days before election day. Duffy now being investigated for his housing expenses as a senator due to apparently having no idea which province he lives in.

Bruce Carson, Harper's "The Fixer". A lawyer disbarred for fraud in the 80's, Carson was charged last year with influence peddling on behalf of his 22-year-old ex-callgirl fiancee - the only bit anyone remembers - to sell water purifiers to First Nations and lobbying for a $25 million government grant within 5 years of leaving government. 

Senator Patrick Brazeau, 38, suspended from the Senate he barely attended with full salary. Dodgy alleged financial record going into the Senate, now highlighted by sexual assault arrest and an investigation into questionable Senate housing expenses. 

Tom Flanagan, Harper's one-time Calgary School mentor and election mastermind. Fired from CBC and on leave from U of Calgary till retirement since yesterday for framing the watching of child pornography as a victimless crime and an issue of 'personal liberty'. Accused Paul Martin of supporting child pornography during 2004 election. Toast but his legacy lives on.

Con MP Rahim Jaffer, once Harper's Chair of Con Caucus. Ran election campaign ads accusing Jack Layton of being soft on marijuana. When Jaffer arrested for drunk driving, cops and defense lawyers couldn't agree whether the cocaine was in Jaffer's pants pocket or in his jacket pocket so he got off.

Nathan Jacobson, busted in the US in 2008 for fraud, $46-million in money laundering, and running online no-prescription pharmacies, but neglected to tell his Canadian hosts he was a fugitive due back in US to serve his sentence. Arrested in Toronto last October. 
Nice photos of Jacobson with Harper and Benjamin Netanyahu presumably no longer available on government website. 

As noted at DJ, Con propaganda machine stressed to the breaking point here but Steve still scraping them off when and only when their public behavior becomes an embarrassment. 
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A further updated picture : Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks

Update : Collect the whole set!
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