COYNE: Stephen Harper and PMO’s - rapidly fraying thread

[Oscar]

Stephen Harper and PMO’s reputation hangs by rapidly fraying thread

[ http://www.canada.com/Coyne+Stephen+Har ... story.html ]

By Andrew Coyne, Postmedia News November 21, 2013 9:54 AM

To get straight to the point — though it is hardly the point: Stephen Harper’s story, and with it his reputation and his office, have been hanging these past six months by the slenderest of threads.

That thread, which the Prime Minister has artfully arranged over his own head, is that whatever illegal acts his every senior aide, Senate leader or party grandee might have known, approved of, connived in, covered up and lied about, he, personally, did not know before a certain date that Nigel Wright, his chief of staff, had written a personal cheque to reimburse Senator Mike Duffy for $90,000 in improperly claimed expenses.

The Prime Minister has hung onto that single thread even as every other part of his story has fallen apart: as “acted alone” became “very few,” as “full confidence” turned to “acted honourably” turned to “deceived,” as “resigned” turned to “dismissed.” So long as it could not be proven that he knew what he denied knowing, he could not be caught in a lie; and so long as the whole issue was framed as “did the Prime Minister flat-out lie to Parliament,” the multiple lies told by everyone around him, before, during and after the whole sordid affair might be made to recede into the background.

So: how stands that slender thread after today? Answer: still there, barely, but fraying by the hour. No, the RCMP affidavit does not produce direct evidence to prove him wrong on this question. But it demonstrates, more clearly than ever, how finely drawn and ultimately irrelevant it is.

Because it is now demonstrable that Wright’s decision to foot the bill out of his own pocket was a comparatively late innovation in the whole scheme. Weeks before, he and Duffy had been arguing over who should pay back the housing allowance the senator had improperly claimed, which had become a growing political embarrassment to the government.

At first, Wright had held firm in his insistence that Duffy himself should repay, and won the Prime Minister’s backing at that famous tete-a-tete-a-tete on Feb. 13. Yet for some reason — perhaps the greatest mystery in the whole affair — he later relented, in the face of Duffy’s pleas that he was unable to pay. So the decision was made to have the party pay his expenses instead.

Lest there be any doubt, that was at Duffy’s insistence. Indeed, it was point three on a list of five his lawyer set out in an email to Wright on Feb. 21 — though with precisely what bargaining leverage is another mystery — demanding the senator be made “whole” (i.e. fully reimbursed) for the disputed expenses, plus have his legal fees covered. And that was what was agreed to in discussions that followed. Only later, when it was discovered that Duffy owed, not $32,000, but $90,000, did the party balk, and only then did Wright cut the cheque himself.

What did the Prime Minister know of this? We cannot yet say with certainty, but the evidence from the RCMP’s trove of recovered emails is strongly suggestive. The key exchanges are on page 33 of the affidavit. “I now have the go-ahead on point three,” Wright reports to Benjamin Perrin and others in the PMO, the Prime Minister’s legal counsel, “with a couple stipulations.” He cautions, “I do want to speak to the PM before everything is considered final.” And, less than an hour later: “We are good to go from the PM once Ben has his confirmation from (Duffy’s lawyer).”

The go-ahead. Speak to the PM. We are good to go. It is hard to read that as anything but an indication that the Prime Minister not only knew, but approved of the deal. Suppose that had remained the deal. It is not clear to me why it would be any more lawful to make a secret payment to a sitting legislator from the party’s bank account than from Wright’s.

More important, it does not seem to be clear to the RCMP. It is that agreement, to make Duffy “whole,” the investigating officer attests — or to use the language of the Criminal Code, to “give and exchange money in exchange for something to be done or omitted to be done” — that “constitutes the bribery offence” he believes occurred.

That is all it is at this point: his belief. No one has even been charged with anything, let alone convicted. But whether any laws were broken, it is at the very least a desperately shady business, even without the subsequent efforts, now documented in excruciating detail, to launder the payment through Duffy’s bank account, tamper with the auditor’s investigation, rewrite a Senate report, and generally cover up and deceive the public.

Whatever might be meant by Wright’s later email to a colleague, that “the PM knows, in broad terms only, that I personally assisted Duffy when I was getting him to agree to repay the expenses,” and regardless of the officer’s statement, offered elsewhere, that “I have seen no evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister was personally involved in the minutiae of those matters,” it seems clear that he knew a great deal more than he has let on. Which was, you will remember, nothing.

The same applies to his underlings. Whoever knew specifically about Wright’s later amendment to the deal, there were a great many who knew about, and participated in, the original deal. And unlike the Prime Minister, who only this month artfully dodged direct questions in the House on whether he knew about any arrangement for the party to pay, almost everyone else in this sorry tale has been caught in what would seem to be glaring contradictions in their account of what they knew or did.

Senator Irving Gerstein informed the party conference last month that he told Wright the party would have nothing to do with any payment. Senators Marjory LeBreton, David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart-Olsen claimed they knew nothing about any deal, either to pay Duffy’s expenses or to whitewash the Senate report. Perrin claimed to have taken no part in Wright’s dealings with Duffy. Perhaps they can explain these apparent contradictions. But they, too, would now seem to be hanging by a thread.

[ . . . ]

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[Oscar]

Nigel Wright probe resumes in ethics commissioner's office

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mary-da ... -1.3624465 ]

Resumption of investigation revealed quietly on page 25 of annual report

By Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press Posted: Jun 09, 2016 12:42 PM ET| Last Updated: Jun 09, 2016 1:03 PM ET

Federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson has quietly resumed her investigation of former Stephen Harper chief of staff Nigel Wright over his secret $90,000 payment to Sen. Mike Duffy.

Her annual report, tabled Thursday in Parliament, says "the Wright examination was resumed in early June 2016."

It provides no further explanation.

Wright was at the heart of a protracted scandal that rocked the former Conservative government, but he was never charged with an offence.

The commissioner suspended her investigation of the former right-hand-man to the prime minister in June 2013 amid an RCMP investigation that resulted in 31 criminal charges against Duffy, including an allegation that the Harper-appointed senator had accepted a bribe.

A judge earlier this spring cleared Duffy of all charges in a scathing judgment that pointed the finger at the Prime Minister's Office.

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mary-da ... -1.3624465 ]

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