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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Clue: It was the PMO in the Senate with a chequebook

Some prophetic words on corruption from the Angry Baird in 2006 ...  (h/t comments at The Tyee )

Now that the Cons' previous bullshit lines have been cleared out of the way, to wit :

a) Duffy was being 'honorable' and "showed leadership" in deciding to pay the money back all by himself because it was in his own words : "the right thing to do", and 

b)  "the Royal Bank helped me ... Nigel played no role" 

c) Wright was just 'helping out a friend' although Wright says they aren't friends

d) "protecting taxpayers" from Duffy's debts - as if garnishing wages is not the way this is being handled for Duffy's senate co-fraudster Patrick Brazeau  

e) Conservatives had nothing to do with the cheque, despite Senator Gerstein, head of the Conservative Fund, being willing to pay off $30K before finally balking at $90K

f) there was no "deal", although it turns out a condition attached to receiving the cheque was Duffy shutting up

g) nobody else in the PMO "knew" about the cheque, downgraded by Steve three days ago to nobody but Wright "made" the decision 

we are left with this :

According to RCMP Corporal Greg Horton's excellent summary :

On June 21, 2013 my office received a letter from Peter Mantas, which I have read, advising that Mr. Wright recalls that he told the following people that he would personally provide funds to repay Duffy’s claimed secondary residence expenses:
a. David van Hemmen (PMO)
b. Benjamin Perrin (PMO)
c. Chris Woodcock (PMO)
d. Senator Irving Gerstein

"Would" is future tense, seeming to indicate they were all advised before Wright wrote Duffy the cheque on March 26.

In his interview with Aaron Wherry from May 31, Senator David Tkachuk explained his chats with the PMO on what would become the Senate's whitewashed report on Duffy's expenses, released May 9 :

Tkachuk : I mean, you’ve got to remember I would have been having a number of discussions with Nigel, I had a few of them. He didn’t tell me to do anything, really. We discussed Mike and the situation that he was in. I mean, the Prime Minister’s Office was very concerned about this. They don’t like this scandal going on. It was hurting us politically.... 

Q: But just to be as categorical as possible, the decision to not write the report as harshly as the others…
A: It didn’t come from someone else giving us an order to do this. Let’s put it that way.
Q: Or any advice to that regard? 

A: Well, I got advice from all kinds of people. I’m not going to tell you who they are, but let’s put it this way: I talked to people in the PMO ....

Q: Did anyone in the Prime Minister’s Office ever suggest to you how the report should be written? 

A: Not really.
Q: What does that mean? 

A: Because when I ask for advice, people will give advice. I did ask for advice, I’m not denying that. But all I’m saying is, no one gave me any orders, no one came to my room and told me what to do.

Nigel Wright sent the cheque to Duffy's lawyer on March 26. 
In April, Tkachuk, head of the senate committee investigating Duffy, was both tipping Duffy off about Deloitte knowing he claimed expenses while on holiday in Florida on the one hand, while on the other being badgered by calls from Wright, asking "‘When is it going to be done? When is this thing over with?"
Or as Steve's Director of Communications Andrew MacDougall confirmed the Tkachuk-Wright pipeline on May 24 when questioned about it : 

“It is standard practice for our office to work with members of House and Senate committees to draft lines in response to committee studies and reports.”

On May 8, after weeks of such "line drafting", Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen had two of three passages critical of Duffy removed from their report; the third was expunged by the Senate's Con majority the following day.

Yet Steve still claims he personally knew nothing about the cheque - either from Wright or from the three advisers inside the Prime Minister's Office Wright told about it sometime before March 26 - until he heard about it on the news a minimum of seven weeks later on May 15.

Meanwhile, Tkachuk's replacement as chair of the Senate Internal Economy Committee,  Senator Gerald Comeau - the guy who as of July 2 was unable to confirm details on whether Duffy ever actually did repay that $90K he got from Nigel Wright - will be teaming up with Steve's buddy Stewart Olsen again behind closed doors in a 3-person committee charged with looking at Pamela Wallin's wayward Senate expenses.

Take it away, Steve ...


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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #6

Bunch up everyone to make room for Steve's latest Perp with Perks, Saulie Zajdel.

Arrested today and facing five counts of corruption, breach of trust, and fraud from 2006 to 2011 in the anti-corruption sweep that also bagged the mayor of Montreal, Zajdel is better known to us as the guy who was put on the public payroll as a "cultural liaison" by Heritage Min James Moore for an alleged $60G's to act as the Cons' shadow pretend MP in Irving Cotler's riding after he lost to him in the 2011 election.  

Here's Steve campaigning for Zajdel three days before Election Day.

Here's Nick Kouvalis from Campaign Research defending their        "reprehensible" calls made into the riding on Steve and Zajdel's behalf implying Cotler would not run.

After his election loss to Cotler, Zajdel gave speeches in the Mount Royal riding, such as one advertised as : “How the Federal Government Relates to Israel.” 

A 2011 election campaign vid uploaded by Zajdel, along with the tagline :

"Let us thank our prime minister Stephen Harper for how he supports the land of Israel, he is its strongest advocate of any leader in the world."

Steve and Saulie in happier times in a photo op featuring brown paper bags - a prop usually avoided by the Cons after Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney spoke at a $600-a-plate fundraiser for Dean Del Mastro, another Perp with Perks, this past May. [h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses]

Brown bag photo h/t : Robert Jensen2 via Holly Stick in comments.
And to Canadian Cynic for the nudge.

Previous Perps editions with bios.
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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 vs. Harper ... vs. Mulcair

Yes, about that ...



It's peculiar that Harper keeps insisting he first heard about his chief of staff Nigel Wright's $90,000 payment to Duffy on May 15 following "speculation in the media", given that CTV's Robert Fife had contacted the PMO the previous day to confirm it and the PMO responded. 
And you gotta love Steve taking credit for it coming out to the public here.



Asked whether he had spoken with his former press secretary now Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen, seen at top shielding Steve from reporters and who successfully moved to whitewash the report on Duffy, Steve replied he had not but that he agreed with the Senate recommendations - which were, of course, whitewashed.

He answered subsequent questions with "The Senate committee report is the Senate committee report." Nothing to do with cabinet or government, says Steve.

OK, that would be the Senate committee report that according to its Harper-appointed chair David Tkachuk :

"... you’ve got to remember I would have been having a number of discussions with Nigel, I had a few of them. He didn’t tell me to do anything, really. We discussed Mike and the situation that he was in. I mean, the Prime Minister’s Office was very concerned about this. They don’t like this scandal going on. It was hurting us politically. 

I talked to people in the PMO ... " 

Q: Can you say though that any of the Prime Minister’s Office’s advice ended up impacting how that report was written? 

A: Well, I don’t know, I suppose. It’s hard for me to say. It’s hard for me to say. Only because I asked for advice from many, many people, so it’s all in the report.

Meanwhile the Senate has responded to having its rewrite outed by putting the deleted parts back in and handing the whole thing over to the RCMP. 
Will all RCMP communications still need to be vetted by Vic Toews as per his 2011 mandate? 
Will all subsequent questions from anyone else be greeted with the usual  'Can't talk about it because it's now under investigation' ?



ETA : From Kristy Kirkup, national affairs editor for Sun Media




On Duffy's email that after he was paid off,  he was "staying silent on orders from the Prime Minister's Office", Steve doesn't know anything about that : “Mr. Speaker, these are not matters that I am privy to” - a Privy Council reference, perhaps? - and besides "Mike Duffy is no longer a member of our caucus."

Was Duffy's non-cooperation with Deloitte after receiving payment from the PMO part of the deal?

Steve doesn't even try for that one : "Mr. Duffy received no money from the PMO or the taxpayers of Canada." 
No, Mr. Duffy is just the beneficiary of the extraordinary largesse of Steve's own chief of staff over an issue that "was hurting us politically." Duffy used the payoff to stop co-operating with auditors and that allowed an all too willing senate steering committee to use it as the excuse to whitewash their report.

Mulcair : "When the chief of staff of the Prime Minister, in the course of his functions from the Prime Minister's Office, gives $90,000 to shut up a sitting senator, that's out of the Prime Minister's Office."

Well done, Mulcair. Best question period ever.
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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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