Friday, February 06, 2009

What Lurks Behind Harper's Capitulation?

Okay, we all know that Stephen Harper has dropped his defamation lawsuit against the Liberals over the Cadman affair. No costs, no apology, no injunction. No explanation.

The story, released late in the Friday news cycle, raises more questions than it answers. Harper's lawyer, Rick Dearden of Gowlings, withdrew as Harper's counsel last November. A lawyer from a prominent Canadian firm ditches a sitting prime minister? No explanation.

And then, the prime minister retains new counsel who drops the lawsuit altogether? No explanation.

There's a huge back story here. Watch for snippets to leak out in the weeks to come.

http://www.canada.com/news/Lawyer+representing+Grits+withdraws/968058/story.html

2 comments:

Andrew P. said...

Dearden quit back in November.

This was probably his plan all along, or at least since Nov when the tapes were shown to be fine and not doctored.

Feign outrage when he launches the lawsuit and it use it to accuse the opposition of bad bad things, then drop it on a Friday sometime in the future so it'll get buried over the weekend and everybody will forget about it.

The Mound of Sound said...

Thanks for the correction Andrew. The late Friday announcement was straight out of the Bush playbook.

I'm still betting there'll be plenty of leakage on this one before long. Maybe not from the Libs but from Harper's rivals within the Cons ranks.