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| Sing, boys, sing. Sing like canaries. |
Don Bayne doesn't even have Ray Novak on the stand yet he's already building a fire under the prime minister's former personal secretary. It all revolves around Novak's participation in the under-the-table cash for expenses scheme that saw $90-grand make its way to Duffy for him to clear his Senate tab.
Harper has lied through his teeth about this, still implausibly claiming that he knew nothing of what was going on until, like everyone else, he read about it in the funny papers. He gilded that lily with an even more fantastic claim that this was strictly between Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy and that they deceived everyone including Harper and all of his other top aides. Harper at first lauded Wright. Then he accepted Wright's resignation. After that he came up with another tall tale whereby he was so furious that he fired Wright on the spot for his betrayal.
Now Bayne's got Nigel Wright backpeddling on Ray Novak. He told the cops that Novak was in on the Wright-Duffey deal. Emails back that up. Only Nigel isn't on that page anymore. He's doing what he can to distance Novak from the scandal. He's been texting Novak as recently as two weeks ago.
Bayne then hits Wright with Special Counsel Benjamin Perrin's statement to the investigators where he also fingers Novak as in on the deal. Wright wilts then wobbles.
When Wright first went on the stand to testify in chief the reporters wrote of a man who seemed confident, collected, even expansive in his answers to the prosecutor's questions. He was the choirboy everyone expected. Things have changed. Step by step Bayne has been undermining Wright's credibility. It would be nice to think he was doing it to get at Harper but his real objective is to build up the defence that Duffy wasn't a party to a bribe, he was a reluctant player in a deal scripted in the PMO and forced upon him. Wright says "no" but Wright isn't a credible witness.
Bayne is constructing a foundation to bring in the evidence of Novak, Van Hemmen, Perrin, the cast of wayward Tory senators and the Conservative Party executive. They're all part and parcel of the Wright-Duffy deal. Somebody had to orchestrate that three act play and Duffy wasn't the one with the clout to pull those strings. Wright wasn't either, except in his capacity as stand in for Shifty Harper.
From "redacting" the email pointing straight to Harper, to contradicting his own statements about Novak, to the inconsistencies between Wright's written statement, Perrin's written statement and Wright's evidence in court, that bright light is looking a lot dimmer.
Fortunately Bayne has plenty of other fish in the barrel to shoot and plenty of time to aim carefully. The others must be wondering, if Bayne can take down the choirboy, what does he have in store for them?
