He's Back! Bruce Carson Under Investigation for Influence Peddling.

Bruce Carson (R) and Unknown Tory Supporter

Former top aide to Stephano Harper, Bruce Carson, is back in the news and, predictably, it's bad news.

CBC reports  that the disgraced senior advisor to Mr. Harper is the subject of an RCMP investigation into illegal lobbying.  This scandal may also have snared another Harper senate appointment, Doug Black.

CBC News has learned the RCMP have seized banking records for Bruce Carson, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, amid their investigation into allegations he illegally lobbied his former government colleagues.

In court records CBC News retrieved Wednesday, the RCMP allege Carson used his connections to lobby on behalf of an organization called the Energy Policy Institute of Canada, or EPIC, for a national energy strategy.

Const. Marie-Josée Robert says Carson's "continuous association" with public office holders allowed him to accept money for "consideration for his co-operation, assistance or exercise of influence in connection with business matters with the government on behalf of EPIC."

"I believe without this inferred influence, Mr. Carson would have not performed his services so effectively," she wrote in an affidavit known as an "information to obtain a production order."

...Doug Black, whom Harper appointed a senator in January 2013, became president of EPIC, at a salary of $10,000 a month, the affidavit says.

[While at EPIC] Black responded to one of Carson's requests for money with praise.

"No issue.... We are making progress and you are the secret sauce," Black wrote, according to the affidavit.