Hands up everybody who believes Nigel Wright was the lone gunman, that he acted alone in his under-the-table deal to funnel money to Mike Duffy.
Hands up everybody who believes Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy are old jogging buddies.
Hands up everybody who believes Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy are old pals from their university days.
Hands up everybody who believes Nigel Wright bails out MPs and Senators with money problems, 90-grand at a pop, just because.
Hands up everybody who believes Nigel Wright, as chief of staff to prime minister Harper, would pull this skulduggery behind his boss's back without so much as a 'by your leave.'
Hands up everybody who believes Benjamin Perrin, PMO chief legal counsel and personal legal advisor to the prime minister, upon learning of the under-the-table deal to funnel money to Mike Duffy, would have cooperated with Nigel Wright and would have chosen to conceal that from the most important client he will have in his life and thereby breach his most fundamental professional obligations to that most important client for all time.
Hands up everyone who believes that Woodcock and van Hemmen would also have dummied up to keep Stephen Harper in the dark about this potentially explosive gambit.
Hands up everyone who believes that top Tory senators, getting wind of the deal and agreeing to launder committee reports concerning their investigation into Mike Duffy, would go to such great, personal risk without assurances that their prime minister was directing the operation.
Hands up everyone who believes that Wright, Perrin, Woodcock, van Hemmen, as well as senators LeBreton, Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen knew fully what was going on but Stephen Harper knew nothing.
Hands up everyone who believes Stephen Harper only discovered the existence of the Wright-Duffy affair after it broke in public.
Hands up everyone who believes that Stephen Harper wasn't trying to hide anything when all e-mails, documents, memos, phone messages, voice mails and documents of any possible description pertaining to Wright-Duffy mysteriously vanished from the prime minister's office.
Okay, let me count the hands. Hey, how come there's no hands? None, not one, really? Alright, let's try this one.
Hands up everyone who believes Steve Harper was in on this from the start and approved the Wright cheque and later saw to it that his PMO was sanitized to remove any paper trail.
Oh, okay. There you all are. Nice to see so many still with us.
Sorry Mound; I got distracted by the emergency responders racing to the Senate chamber today. Last heard, Marjory LaBreton's pants were still on fire.
ReplyDeletethe problem is...many folks...like sh, Marjory etal.they all are such convincing liars, that the conservative base might buy this load of crap.
ReplyDeleteI really hope not...but they are politicians, and dont all of them have a skillset that involves lying daily:P
whats amazing is how the team are keeping up with the timeline and the lies, they must study the script every night religiously.
Thanks so much, Rumley, for that disturbing mental image.
ReplyDeleteDeb, I think what you're observing is damage control desperation. There's a reason why LeBreton is no longer Tory Senate leader and why both Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen resigned from their audit committee. It's the same reason why Nigel Wright fell on his sword and, probably, why legal advisor Perrin packed up his bags and hightailed it back to the West coast.
.. question, for future reference .. for Stevie
ReplyDelete- Who is the IT person, and/or the clerical person(s) working in the PMO or elsewhere, that would have been tasked with erasure, deletion, shredding or hiding of any/all communications relative to the Nigel Wright payment to Michael Duffy?
Name and Title and immediate superior.. please
Any old beat cop or detective would be all over that IT person in a flash.. There are only so many people that could be trusted and capable of such a technically thorough expunging.. Do you think they got the order orally ? This isn't IT work, this is plumbing - flushing - midnight work - heavy password system access and shredder work
Why waste time in QP with a seasoned ignorer of legality.. Why not go after the underlings that won't end up ridiculously wealthy & on numerous boards of directors.. and roll it all up ?
Here's a scenario for you .. An IT plumber or technogeek like this is deposed, signs an affidavit testifying who told him/her - to do what ..
In short order, the phone rings in the office of 'Issue management' or Ray Novak .. and Houston, we have a problem .. we are about to fall out of orbit .. and we will all burn up on re-entry ..
Job # 1 is to identify that IT person
Job # 2 is to roll them up, depose etc
Job # 3 is to make that phone call
Job # 4 is to hear Stephen Harper is resigning
immediately, to spend more time with his family
MoS:
ReplyDeleteWell, you know where my hand was raised for, I've never been able to suspend my disbelief that the PM most/best known for being on top of the minutia of how his office runs far in excess of any prior leader/PM could on this one issue be so totally out of the loop as he has claimed. Now we have him saying that a few in his office knew about the Wright/Duffy deal, yet none of them told him after the first time last May he claimed otherwise in the House that was not true and that n one else in PMO knew anything about it, that he had misled the House and that he needed to correct this immediately, like any staffer in that position is obligated to do. Really? This is supposed to be believable??? AND none of them gets fired once he knows better??? Come On! Not to mention that he has never taken any action to clean house in his PMO once he found out what his CoS did (leaving aside the 4 days he defended that action instead of immediately firing him, something he also never did instead only letting Wright resign, hardly the appropriate action if this really was a surprise to the PM) for Duffy given its clearly illegality, at the minimum civilly and more than possibly criminal in nature,shows a total lack of concern for what happened and how it exposed him and his government to serious political and legal jeopardy! The *ONLY* way this behaviour makes any sense is that Harper was aware of what was going on AND that it was at his direction at the minimum in general if not in complete detail.
The "fact" that there is supposedly zero paper trail for any of this in the PMO according to Harper is another telling point. That only happens when a purge happens, otherwise whenever anything happens there is at least some paper created when we are talking about how any government and its staff operates, it is the nature of the beast. If Wright had never paid Duffy one maybe could have argued there was no paper generated because nothing happened that would have caused any, but you DO NOT transfer that kind of money under the table with the clear intent to hide it from both sides unless there is a purpose to it, and therefore one wants to make sure both sides agree what they are getting for it. To those that think this would be foolish, remember, they would have expected that these documents would never see the light of day until whenever we declassify such documents, which would be long after everyone involved had died of old age.
No, the behaviour, actions, and inactions of Harper throughout this affair contradict his words in the House on this issue. Especially when we are talking about politicians and particularly political leaders actions/inactions are what speak the loudest AND most honestly, and it is there that I find it most obvious that Harper is lying through his teeth in the House on this affair across the board.
The RCMP should simply request the backup copies of file, email (and any other) servers of the PMO for the past year. They could then reconstruct the servers and search for relevant documents.
ReplyDelete.. "it is inexplicable to the base
ReplyDeletethat there are ZERO documents
in the PMO or CPC servers relating to Duffy/Wright
yet Duffy's attorney may hold a complete set..
as well as the RCMP"
Earth to Stephen Harper .. 'Hello ? Hello ?'
Can you spell - CSIS ??
Can you/have you arrange(d) to erase their copies ??
And .. could you please cease and desist
from using that Oh Canada music sample
in your endless media propaganda .. thanks..