How Nigel Wright Got a Pass

It's an interesting story but hardly convincing. When the RCMP went after senator Mike Duffy for supposed bribery it left people shaking their heads. How could Duffy have committed the crime of bribery for receiving Nigel Wright's $90-thousand without Wright being criminally responsible for giving the bribe? It became known as the "immaculate bribe."

Newly released documents show the RCMP gave Wright "a pass"  in order to secure Harper's ex-chief of staff's testimony against Duffy. They let the little fish go in order to catch the big fish.

Two things wrong with this story. In the months between Wright's resignation turned firing (remember how Harper changed his story on that?) and the RCMP announcement that he would not be charged, supposedly because he'd done nothing wrong, I kept getting word from a well placed Ottawa conservative that Wright was making the rounds socially and telling the conservative fold that, if he was charged, he would tell all. The message , I'm told, was that he would implicate Harper as not merely knowing everything but as the directing, and hence criminal, mind. The "bribe" was all about making a political problem go away.

Wright hung around Ottawa those several months basically doing nothing but waiting for the "all clear" from the RCMP. Literally the day after he was taken off the hook, he headed for the airport.

Here's something to remember. You can't make sense of this scandal without recalling how it broke in the first place. It began with an incredibly foolish email Duffy sent to his inner circle (seemingly half of Ottawa) about the deal that had been cooked up in the PMO. It unveiled all the essential elements of the deal. Duffy would be given cash to square away his Senate debt. But there was more. He was to immediately cease cooperating with the Senate auditors. And the PMO would see to it that the Senate audit report "went easy on" old Duff.

Duffy's email was sent contemporaneously with the deal. It's the marker. Afterward each and every element of the deal came to pass. It was only well after the plan was implemented that someone leaked the email to CTV's Bob Fife. That critical email did not evidence some bribe. There was no scheme hatched by Duffy. The scheme, quite plainly, was the doing of the PMO - Wright and Harper. Remember these are the RCMP's top investigators and the commissioner who supposedly were blinded to the obvious.

The second problem is that, as Justice Vaillancourt observed, Duffy wasn't bribed at all. Duffy was ordered to take the money, pay off his Senate tab, and make the story die. But Vaillancourt went further. He said that a crime had indeed been perpetrated, just not by Duffy.

Remember that Duffy was acquitted of all 31 charges brought against him. The very number is astonishing. 31 charges, all of them groundless? 31 acquittals, that's not a matter of misjudgment or oversight. That's a political persecution, a deliberate effort to bury the guy. That's what Harper had said they would do if Duffy didn't play ball. And the RCMP were in on it. They had to be.

Wright was taken off the hook because he had to be. When he was off the hook so too were the prime minister, the Senate leadership, and everyone else in the PMO. The RCMP didn't do it gracefully. It was extraordinarily clumsy. They had to invent a new crime, the immaculate bribe. But it staunched the bleeding within the PMO, the Senate leadership and the Tory party. God save the King.

For Harper, It's Showtime - the Sequel. Fremdschamen, Indeed.

Okay, it's not Mike Duffy. We won't hear much of him again until the election is over.

Today's fare is more like a light lunch, maybe just a handful of trail mix. It's Bruce Carson time!

The two-time jailbird, fraudster and, naturally, top Harper aide goes back to his old stomping grounds today, the prisoner's box in an Ottawa criminal court, to stand trial for influence peddling in connection with a scheme to flog water filtration gear to First Nations reserves.

Carson raises memories of Harper's standard modus operandi when he's been caught out with dirty hands. It goes like this. He begins with a floater lie. If that works, fine. If it doesn't sell, he backpeddles - a bit. He tosses in a glimmer of truth. If that flops he backpeddles again, adding a little more truth. Eventually the whole thing comes to a dreary end, the scandal deflates and Harper skulks away into the shadows.

When the Carson scandal erupted it began with questions about how a guy, twice imprisoned for fraud, could be allowed into Harper's inner sanctum, the Prime Minister's Office. Harper's first response was "who knew?" If he'd only known there was no way an ex-con like Carson would have been allowed to set foot in the hallowed PMO. Then he began pointing fingers at the Privy Council or the RCMP for letting him down, failing to properly vet Carson, dropping the ball. (Remember, the RCMP back then was being run by a veteran Tory backroom boy, Bill Elliott). Finally Harper had to admit that, well, he'd known just a little bit of Carson's sordid past but he thought the guy deserved a second chance and so he took Bad Bruce in. But, if he'd known the guy's full record, he would have never, ever, not ever let him in.

It's the standard tale. A layer of bullshit reinforced with another layer of bullshit and finally smothered in an even thicker layer of bullshit.

The thing is, even Harper's lies were irreconcilable. No one asked why he lied to us when he first said that no one knew. You would have thought when he finally admitted to having known about at least some of Carson's record, someone would have asked why he denied it at the start. No one ever seemed to ask why those responsible for vetting Carson didn't send up flares or, indeed, whether they had. No one asked whether Harper derailed the entire vetting process to get his preferred guy into the PMO. It's not hard to run a criminal records check and, in Carson's case, it would have triggered all the alarms.

Here's the thing. Ottawa is literally bursting at the seams with veteran, lifelong Tory insiders, guys who've been with the party as far back as Diefenbaker and Stanfield. I know some of them. They all get together. They socialize. They lunch. They frequent the same clubs. I know a few of these guys. One of them told me that he and two others I know were alarmed when they got word that Carson was being hired and they each got ahold of senior Harper aides and said don't hire this guy, he's bent, he's a crook.

Harper didn't need the RCMP to vet Carson. He didn't need the Privy Council to vet Carson. The PMO switchboard was flooded with calls. That's all he needed. He knew everything there was to know about Bruce Carson, serial jailbird. With that public record knowledge only one person could have brought Carson in to the PMO, his accomplice, the PM himself.

Which brings me to a pair of letters in today's TorStar from Bob Walsh of Connecticut and Margaret Perrault of North Bay. Do you see a pattern here?


PM insists Wright alone was to blame, Sept. 8

So, Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists that Nigel Wright was alone to blame for the Duffy affair. As Adam blamed Eve, Richard Nixon blamed John Dean, Bill Clinton blamed “that woman,” now Stephen Harper blames Nigel Wright.

Great theatre but it is unclear whether it is a comedy or a tragedy.

Mr. Harper has cemented a legacy for himself as believing Canadians are idiots. Mr. Wright has created a legacy as one of the great dupes in Canadian political history.

The Germans have a word for what we feel about this, fremdschämen: to be embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed himself, and doesn’t notice.

Bob Walsh, Wilton, CT

If Stephen Harper was so angry when he learned about the secret plan concocted by Nigel Wright alone, as he claimed on his interview with Peter Mansbridge, why did he so vigorously defend the action for several days, following the media report of this story?

Why would he dispatch Pierre Polievre to the political talk shows to make the case repeatedly that Mr. Wright was really such a Good Samaritan, paying this money out of his own pocket, and saving the taxpayers the bill in the process?

It also begs the question that if, Mr. Harper was so angry about Mr. Wright’s plan, does a good luck call to him about his new position seem like something this Prime Minister would do, for someone who had allegedly crossed him.

Margaret Perrault, North Bay

Defrocking the Choir Boy

Sing, boys, sing. Sing like canaries.

Did Harper's current Chief of Staff lie to officers investigating the Wright-Duffy scandal?  If he did then shouldn't he also be lawyering up?

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?

Duffy's Shadow Looms Over Harper's Future

We won't have long to wait for the release of the tell-all book on Mike Duffy, penned by his old journalism colleague, Dan Leger.

The book, Duffy: Stardom to Senate to Scandal,  is said to revisit the good old days when Leger met Duffy in Ottawa (1984-1990) and traces Duffy's television career, his pursuit of a seat in the Senate and the scandal that brought him down and continues to plague Stephen Harper.

According to Leger, he and Duffy spent hours on the deck of the senator's Cavendish cottage as Duffy spilled the beans.  Duffy maintained, as he always has, that he was set up by Harper and the prime minister's office.  Leger writes:

Over time, the links to the prime minister’s office became much more clear and the RCMP’s case against Duffy and the other senators came to light. Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself came into the critical spotlight. It also became obvious that Duffy and the others were being well and truly thrown under the bus by their former Conservative friends.

 That’s why this is not just a story about misbehaving senators. The Duffy-Senate affair spilled across the weeks and months and into the central machinery of government. Nigel Wright’s involvement put the PMO at the centre of the scandal. Harper himself was reduced to talking points. 
Friends of Ol' Duff are less than happy that the beleaguered senator spoke so freely to Leger.  They fear Duffy may have given too much away too early. 

Nigel, Nigel, Come In Nigel

TorStar's Chantel Hebert ponders whether former Harper chief of staff, Nigel Wright, will turn out to be the man who takes down our prime minister.

Once known around Ottawa as "Mr. Integrity", Wright has been supposedly laying low since he was fired resigned over the Wright-Duffy scandal.  No one seems to know much about the former PMO Wunderkind since he left Parliament Hill in May.  It's a safe bet that he's back in Toronto making millions and wondering why he got involved with that lying, manipulative, self-serving bastard in the first place.

Hebert seemed to be trying to flush Wright out of the weeds with this line:

Only a saint or alternatively someone with a guilty conscience would continue to play dead as his former boss wreaks irreparable damage on his or her reputation.

Sorry, Chantal, that's way too obvious.  Look at it this way.  Nigel is super-connected.  You have to be to make the kind of money he earns.  In Toronto, super-connected comes in two flavours - Conservative and Liberal.  Ideally, if you play your cards Wright, you can have a bit of both.

Nigel is a young man.  He has a long and productive life ahead of him. Storming back to Ottawa with sword raised to smite a lying prime minister would probably be seen by Wright's partners as bad for business.

Stephen Harper isn't playing to the Bay Street crowd when he turns on Wright.  Shifty is playing to the Gullibillies, the Conservative base who desperately need to believe all this is not happening.  No way, no sir, not Steve Harper.  No.   They're not exactly on the same cocktail circuit as Nigel.

None of this is to say that we've heard the end of Nigel Wright.  Hardly. There are said to exist, in various hands including the RCMP's, copies of electronic communications, contemporaneous to the events, that indicate Mr. Harper, contrary to his wobbly denials, was fully aware and approved of the Wright-Duffy, under-the-table cash deal.

If these accounts are true, all and sundry are waiting to learn whether Shifty can figure out some way to keep those messages from ever surfacing in public.  That will influence how events and players go forward.

Wouldn't you love to know how many times Shifty has conferred, either telephonically or in person, with his pet RCMP Commish Paulson over the past couple of months?  I'll wager they don't communicate via e-mail or letter.

That said, I still think Hebert is on to something.  It is time to focus on Nigel Wright.  Tie Harper down.  Keep NigelWright alive in Question Period.  Force Harper to squirm on the resigned/fired issue.  Clarify Wright's supposed 'deception.'   Deceiving is a deliberate misleading.  It's intentional.  Harper is contending that Wright intentionally misled him. Why would he do that?  To what end?  When Wright knew that so many others knew, how could he assume he could conceal the truth from Harper?  Now it seems there were a dozen people, key Tories all, in on it. Did they all deceive Shifty too?   They must have done just that.  And what fate befell them?

A few have resigned from posts and committees - LeBreton, Stewart-Olsen, Tkachuk, Woodcock - but that seemed to have happened as the flames began to lick at their feet.  Harper didn't take their scalps.

What Harper is alleging is actually a conspiracy by a dozen top Tories to deceive him.  A conspiracy, a solemn pact, to mention nothing about any aspect of this backroom deal to the prime minister.  What are these people, Druids?

This is Ottawa, a place where nothing is secret that is known by three people.  Duffy, keep a secret, really?  We don't even know how many Ottawans received the e-mail that broke this scandal, the one that was leaked to CTV's Bob Fife.   Hell, that could be half of Conservative Ottawa.

When you put it all together, Harper is saying that he was one of the few Conservatives in Ottawa who didn't know.  Even though it was all going on just a few doors down the hall from his own desk.

Explore, develop, confront and by all means keep the pressure on Stephen Harper in Question Period.   Bang that gong until his ears bleed.

Meanwhile, check out what Nigel is up to these days.  Is he getting any business from prominent Conservatives or even the party itself?  Has he truly become persona non grata in Conservative circles?  Who knows where that could lead.

Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen Succumb to Denialism, Senate-Style

Senate scandal - it's not just for the rookies any more.  Veteran Tory senators, Dave Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, have issued statements denying they knew anything about the backroom deal between Harper chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and the beleaguered Cavendish Cottager, Mike Duffy, to cover Duffy's Senate tab.

Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen deny that PMO deal had anything to do with their laundering of the Senate

report into Duffy's expense problems - even if that might have been part of the deal between Duffy and Wright.

"It was all a coincidence, ya see - a pure coincidence.  Coulda happened to anybody, see." 

CTV News reported that Tkachuk had a pact with Duffy whereby, if Duffy took Wright's handout and settled his Senate tab, the audit report would be less critical and questions about Duffy's residence problem would go away.   What is this, The Sopranos?