Another FBI Investigation to Worry Trump. This Time It's Whitefish.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI has launched an investigation into the incredibly smelly $300 million no-bid contract given to Montana company, Whitefish Energy, to rebuild Puerto Rico's shattered electricity grid.

Whitefish is basically a shell company incorporated just two years ago that had, prior to hurricane Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico just two full-time people on staff. It's also based in the small town of Whitefish, Montana, which just happens to be the home of Trump Interior Secretary, Ryan "Scorched Earth" Zinke.

Ricardo Ramos, CEO of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), announced Sunday the agency will cancel its contract with Whitefish Energy after the company “finish(es) what they started.” The announcement comes a day after the island’s governor, Ricardo Roselló requested that the deal be torn up. Whitefish Energy, a two-person outfit out of Whitefish, Mont., raised eyebrows when it landed the $300 million, no-bid contract in the weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and left the U.S. territory largely without power.

At "Coincidence Central," a.k.a. the Trump White House, officials indignantly deny there could be any possible connection between Whitefish Energy, a Trump donor, and the favourite son of Whitefish, Interior Secretary Zinke, and the Trump administration. Who would even imagine such a thing?

Grifters, they're just a bunch of damn grifters.

Tell Us Why, Nigel

The prime minister says he didn't know.  Nigel Wright says the prime minister didn't know.

Wright didn't tell Harper.  Perrin didn't tell Harper.  Woodcock and van Hemmen didn't tell Harper either.   Harper's top and most trusted advisors didn't tell the prime minister, the very person they were hand-selected to work for, anything about the $90K under-the-table-cash deal between Wright and senator Mike Duffy.

Why didn't even one of them tell their prime minister about something this potentially explosive?

Did it simply slip their minds, all their minds?  That might be plausible if Harper had surrounded himself with mental defectives but these guys were A-List talent.

As RCMP cpl. Greg Horton avers, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of e-mails written pertaining to the Wright-Duffy-Harper scandal.   This was on a lot of people's minds.  It occupied a lot of their time.  They were communicating among themselves.  They were communicating with top Tory senators.  They were communicating with top officials of the Conservative Party.   They were communicating with Duffy and with Duffy's lawyer.

Recall that there was already a scandal simmering in the media before the under-the-table-cash scandal erupted in mid-May.  The Wright-Duffy-Harper scandal was born out of the original residence/housing expenses scandal.  That was the one where Duffy denied he owed a dime and said his status and expenses had been cleared from the outset.

The prime minister knew all about that scandal.  He and Nigel Wright specifically met with Duffy where the prime minister told Duffy it wasn't a question of whether his claims were legitimate.   The prime minister said that the Tory base were a bunch of bumpkins and would never accept the optics of Duffy's pre-cleared expense claims.

Harper never said the claims weren't valid.  Neither did the Tory Senate leadership.  Neither did Nigel Wright.   Not at first, they didn't.  Not for years, they didn't.  No, it was only once the story was spoonfed to the media and the optics changed that there was even a hint of impropriety on Duffy's part.  And that was the moment that Mike Duffy was thrown under the bus, when Harper said, "this doesn't look good, pay it all back."  That marks the starting point of the PMO scandal.

You might want to remember this the next time you hear Nigel Wright's patriotic plea that he only coughed up the money out of a noble concern that the lowly taxpayers should not be out of pocket.   That is unadulterated mouth-crap.  Nigel Do-Right didn't give a damn about Duffy's expenses until daylight began to shine on the prime minister.  He's already told the cops he considered Duffy's expenses valid right up to the point where they became a political problem.   That would appear to fix the point in the timeline at which Nigel Wright begins to lie his ass off.  Whatever he says about events after that point needs to be viewed with real skepticism.

The prime minister would have us believe that, despite the story being front and centre in the papers and on the evening network newscasts, the ultimate prime ministerial control freak simply handed it all off to his top aides and went on to other business, everything but this scandal that was slowly scorching his party and closing in on his three "celebrity" Senate appointees.

It was at this point that the PMO sprung into action, erecting the Wall of Plausible Deniability around their prime minister.  Henceforth Harper would be kept out of sight, shielded behind Nigel Wright; Wright's 2-i-C, David van Hemmen;  the PMO Director of Issues Management, Chris Woodcock;  and the PMO legal top gun, Harper's personal legal advisor, Benjamin Perrin.   If you were the prime minister and you got the waft of burning flesh from the flames of scandal licking at your feet, who better to surround yourself with?

Wright has identified this foursome as the group within the PMO that had knowledge of his Duffy payout.   Yet he's minimizing what they knew and the role they played in the under-the-table scheme.  Almost as quickly as the wall was raised and the deed was done, Festung Harper was dismantled.  Perrin, his work done, hightailed it back to Vancouver perhaps unwisely popping up just once to deny having had anything to do with the Duffy payoff.  Within days of the under-the-table-cash/PMO scandal hitting the airwaves, Wright resigned/was canned. Woodcock and van Hemmen eventually followed suit.  The prime minister's office was sanitized of every individual who could implicate the boss directly.

So, look at the four who were instrumental in the under-the-table-cash deal - the chief of staff, the assistant chief of staff, the director of issues management, and the chief legal counsel - the Big Four - all in on it and not one mentioning a word of it to the prime minister and then, all four, at respectable intervals, scarpering off into the night.   If only there was musical accompaniment it might be a ballet, it was so plainly choreographed.   And yet Harper, supposedly, knew nothing until he read it in the funny papers.

Of course it wasn't just the Big Four who had knowledge of the affair or who played a role in it.  You have to throw in senators Marjory LeBreton, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, Dave Tkachuk, and Irving Gerstein and toss in one or two officials of the Conservative Party including Arthur Hamilton.

So not only did Wright keep Harper in the dark, so too did van Hemmen, Woodcock, Perrin, LeBreton, Stewart-Olsen, Tkachuk, Gerstein and Hamilton not to mention every Tory that Duffy disclosed the scheme to - they all had to keep Harper completely in the dark.   Can you imagine that?  Listen, that's the very sort of thing that's known to happen all the time - in the alternate universe.

Nigel needs to tell us why he supposedly kept Harper in the dark.  Woodcock, van Hemmen, Perrin (especially Perrin), LeBreton, Stewart-Olsen, Tkachuk, Gerstein and Hamilton all need to tell us why they supposedly kept Harper in the dark. What was the protocol, the understanding?  Who said, "we do not discuss this with the prime minister"?   Because somebody in authority had to have said that or else Harper's lying, he knew.

So cpl. Horton, you've got a lot of work left to do.  You could start by asking these usual suspects to tell you "why."

Stephen Harper's Book of Fables - Logged and Chronicled

The closer Shifty Steve Harper gets to the political gallows, the better, the richer and more fulsome his memory becomes.  It all flows out in a progression of fables, each more obviously contrived than the last.

Fable One

When the Wright-Duffy scandal unexpectedly broke in the media, Steve said his prize assets - his top drawer chief of staff, Nigel Wright - had merely done the Wright thing in getting his "most valuable" senator, Mike Duffy, the funds to make good his debt to the Senate and Canadian taxpayers.

That's Steve getting caught off-balance, taken by surprise before he can conjure up a suitable fantasy that his base, the faithful Conservative gullibillies will swallow.

Fable Two

A few days after exonerating Nigel Wright, Shifty Steve said the guy had to go (as though that was Steve's decision - laugh, giggle).  But Shifty assured Parliament and the Canadian people that Wright acted alone and that nobody else in the top tiers of his prime minister's office who could have, should have and would have tipped him off knew anything about Wright-Duffy.  They didn't know so how could he, Shifty Steve?

Shifty was quick to add that the transaction between Wright and Duffy was unacceptable or worse and had he any inkling of it, he would have reared up on his hind legs in righteous indignation and put an immediate end to it.

Fable Three

As the scandal refused to just go away and continued to close on him, Shifty recanted Fable Two and admitted that Wright-Duffy wasn't quite the secret he had said a few months earlier.  Shifty said there were a few people inside the PMO who knew of it but just not him.

Wait a minute, when Shifty rolled out Fable Two, he insisted that no one inside the PMO new anything about Wright-Duffy.  No one as in no one, nobody, no staffer. It was all Wright's doing and he kept it secret.  How could he make that claim unless he got all his little minions together and asked them?  Did he not ask them or did they just lie their asses off to the nation's ultimate control freak?  Of course there's a third possibility.  Shifty Steve may have been lying through his teeth from the get go and is still telling whatever lie seems necessary to fit the constantly emerging facts and yet still prevent the scandal from morphing into Wright-Duffy-Harper.

At times like this it can be very helpful to look at how a person has behaved in the past.   Hmm, let me see, let me see.  Oh, I know, what about that guy, Bruce Carson?  Yes, Bruce Carson,  the disbarred lawyer, convicted fraudster, ex-jailbird that Shifty personally admitted to the top tier of his prime minister's office.  The old geezer with the 22-year old 'former' escort girlfriend.  Shifty's most valuable fixer.

Ah, yes.  Bruce Carson.   The guy who longtime Tory operative, then RCMP commish, Bubbles Elliott, swept through the security vetting despite five fraud convictions, disbarment, jail time and two bankruptcies - that Bruce Carson.

As your humble scribe wrote in April, 2011:

Harper says he didn't know, he was let down, Privy Council procedures failed. Maybe that sort of bullshit is palatable in Red Deer or Moose Jaw but don't try to peddle it in Ottawa.  One of my Tory friends volunteered that there were repeated warnings given to Harper's staff.  Apparently everybody failed, everybody that is except Harper.

Does this sound familiar?  Discern any patterns yet?  This is Bruce Carson, Fable One.  Blame unnamed staffers and plead complete and total ignorance.  Claim that if you had only known, none of this ever would have happened.  You would have seen to that.  Just add water, stir, and wait for the scandal to magically disappear.

But it was in the Bruce Carson affair, perhaps we should call it Carson-Harper, that we saw how effortlessly Shifty moved on to Fable Two when his first pack of lies wasn't quite enough to kill off the scandal.  Within the month, Shifty's Fable One denial ran up on the rocks of reality and that's when Shifty Steve transitioned to Fable Two mode.

Suddenly Shifty came back with a straight face and said, well okay, he knew about some of Carson's criminal record, the fraud, the disbarment, the misappropriation, the jail time but he thought a stretch inside the Harper PMO would rehabilitate old Bruce.  Yeah, right.  Sending Carson to the PMO for rehab is sort of like sending a wayward girl to a brothel to mend her ways.

It was an audacious, bald-faced lie - and yet it worked.  The prime ministerial lap dogs, a.k.a. the parliamentary press gallery, went back to their labours of rewriting government press releases, Carson hightailed it to Calgary and the whole thing died just like the stench eventually departs the dung heap.  Shifty Steve didn't even have to make a ritual sacrifice of his top aides.

It must be pretty obvious that our prime minister is an inveterate liar who will say whatever he thinks he must to get himself out of a jam, tailoring his lies to conform to changing facts on the ground, confident that the media scribes are just too cowed to ever call "bullshit" on him.  It's something of an artform for Shifty Steve.  Wright-Duffy-Harper is an obvious carbon copy of Carson-Harper, only with one or two extra chapters.

Just Askin, That's All

Rumours are surfacing of yet another pending arrest in the Sponsorship Scandal. Okay, now this is eight years and two governments after the fact.

This proceeding, if it comes to pass, needs to be put under some scrutiny. Remember we're dealing with the RCMP here, the same once-proud outfit whose commissioner gamed the last election with a spurious, mid-campaign press release about a possible scandal involving hinted wrongdoing by Ralph Goodale.

Now that same tattered remnant of a national police force is headed by whom? Why it would be my old lawschool classmate and life-long Tory insider Bill "Bubbles" Elliot. Much as I like Bill it does trouble me that Harper appointed a total partisan to head the RCMP.

Now in the justice system, appearances count. The mantra goes that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. In other words, it's all got to be above board and completely beyond suspicion. That's not being picky. There's a good reason for it, the best in fact. If the administration of justice is tainted with the appearance of favouritism or bias, it can undermine the one thing the system cannot do without - public confidence in its integrity.

The appearance on this one - well it stinks frankly. You have the Harper Cons now reeling from a succession of scandals - Mulroney, Cadman, In & Out, etc. - and they could really use something to distract the public and turn the tables on the Libs. What have they got? Precious little - unless they can milk that sponsorship scandal one more time, especially now that an election is looming.

The RCMP hasn't done too well on the smell test lately. If they're going to launch another politically-charged proceeding - at this late stage - when they're headed by a lifelong partisan - and having displayed an openness to dodgy interference in the last election - they damn well better come up with a very convincing explanation of the timing and they'd better not count on the benefit of the doubt if their story has that now all-too-familiar stink to it.

Meanwhile the force can explain why it's not proceeding with perjury charges against Mr. Mulroney. The Commish, after all, worked in Mulroney's government. Maybe they don't think that Mulroney's sworn statements that his only involvement with Schreiber was a few meetings for coffee constitutes perjury. If so, I'd love to hear them come out with it.

Why Can't Holy Rollers Keep It In Their Pants?

America's religious nutjobs from Jimmy Swaggart to Jim Baker and many since have acquired a reputation for indulging in seamy pecadillos but this one may take the cake.

Ever heard of Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church of Decatur, Georgia? No, I didn't think so. Until recently CHSCHHC was just another American megachurch, but now it's become so much more.

It all began when the church's now 80-year old "Archbishop", Earl (naturally) Paulk (I hope that's not pronounced "poke"), and CHSCHHC got sued by former church employee Mona Brewer, who says Earl Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. Earl Paulk admitted to the affair in front of the church last January.

After confessing to his parishoners about putting it to Mona, Earl swore that she was the only woman he'd ever slept with except for his good wife. Earl also said the same thing, under oath, in the course of a deposition in the lawsuit.

For reasons that are unclear, somehow the Cobb County District Attorney and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation got to investigating Earl's evidence and even got a judge to issue an order for paternity testing.

The subject to be tested? Why, Earl's nephew and the current head pastor of CHSCHHC, 34-year old D.E. Paulk. Even Maury Povich doesn't get anything this good. The results? You guessed it, D.E. isn't Earl's nephew. He's Earl's son. Seems Earl must've plumb forgot about banging his brother's wife way back when but, then again, wouldn't anyone?

By the way, D.E. stands for Donnie Earl. Maybe he'll start going by Earl Junior. He's pictured below in a moment of utter rapture.

Here by the way is the skinny on Donnie Earl from Atlanta's own, Creativeloafing.com:

Most in the congregation don't doubt that Donnie Earl Paulk has the Holy Spirit. He's heir to men who've had the Holy Spirit before him. This -- the plush office, the church academies, the television broadcast and the cathedral -- is his legacy, handed down from 10 generations of preachers and, ultimately, his uncle. Donnie Earl is a megachurch bishop in the making, a creation of the kingdom in which he was reared, and he's got all the right marks: the charismatic stage presence, the devotion of his followers, the eye for Versace suits and the heart for society's outcasts.

But there are other things about Donnie Earl that don't fit. And in the end, those qualities might make him more unimaginably successful than pastors before him. Donnie Earl is progressive where his predecessors were stodgy, young where they were old, hip where they were square. He aspires to host a spot on MTV, produce films, launch a record label and invite Lenny Kravitz to guest preach at his church. Once Donnie Earl takes over the south DeKalb kingdom of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, with its multi-million-dollar operating budget and its 7,000 members, he plans to extend his reach into a secular entertainment empire.

Praise the Lord and pass the collection plate.

Sorry, Lavoie - It Is Our Business, Your Boss Mulroney Made It Our Business

"Luc Lavoie told CanWest News Service that when Mr. Mulroney left politics in 1993, he had money pressures since he was "not a rich man" at the head of a young family with certain lifestyle expectations."

I read James' post suggesting that having Luc Lavoie as a spokesman is a real blunder for Brian Mulroney. I'm not so sure that this isn't a pretty shrewd tactic.

Brian Mulroney likes to get his message out through underlings and fixers, like Luc Lavoie and Fred Doucet. I expect it's the deniability game. If Lavoie says something - and it backfires (as it has so often) - Mulroney can skirt the result by saying his underling was wrong. Much better than getting stuck with it personally.

Now if Mulroney is going to get a sympathetic ear anywhere, it's with Canada's uber-right media. Yes, I mean the National Disgrace. Sort of like how Cheney always gravitates to Fox News whenever he's looking for a compliant interviewer who will keep a straight face while he spins bullshit.

Not suprising Mulroney's latest "po-boy" refrain wound up being carried by Lavoie to the National Disgrace. Here's the latest. Yes, Karlheinz Schreiber met with Mulroney three times to pass cash-stuffed envelopes, each to the tune of $100,000, across a table to the boss. Why three envelopes? Why $100,000 each time? Easy. Each $100,000 was for one year's consulting fees for Mulroney helping Schreiber with a project to build military vehicles in Montreal and to establish a pasta business.

Yes, says Lavoie, Mulroney did accept the first cash retainer while he was still an MP for Baie Comeau but after Kim Campbell had succeeded him as prime minister.

Now the next line is that, because the delightful little bundles of cash were retainers, Mulroney wasn't obliged to report them as income right away. In other words, they only became income in the years in which they were earned. Okay.

And, on the thorny issue of when his boss did actually decide to run to RevCan and pay taxes on the "income," Lavoie punts and says that isn't anyone's "God damn business." Ooh, ouch! Sorry, Luc, but it is our goddamned business, Mulroney made it our business.

It was Mulroney who told counsel, under oath, that his involvement with Schreiber after leaving office had amounted to simply having coffee with the guy once or twice. Mulroney offered an account of their relationship and he can hardly now say it's the government's fault because they didn't ask if he'd pocketed any cash-stuffed envelopes from Schreiber.

Mulroney proferred an account demonstrably at odds with the current story now that incontrovertible facts have come out that certainly seem to contradict his testimony. So it's cut here and snip there and sand off these rough spots trying to make his account conform to the known facts and the more he does that, the more obvious everything becomes.

One thing I don't get. LaVioe goes to the National Disgrace with a sob story about how Mulroney was all but broke when he left office. Poor fella! What I don't get is how does a guy in such embarrassed circumstances manage to get in his car, drive down to Montreal and buy a really big house for, oh, $1.6-million (March, 1993) and then throw another $1-million to renovate the old dump? Wouldn't you like to be that kind of poor? When you look at those numbers, Schreiber's $300,000 was chump change.

Have the Mounties Hit Rock Bottom?

They've burned barns in Quebec, screwed up the biggest terrorist attack in Canadian history, shot a young man in the back of his head in "self defence" and now brought international ridicule on their force by the apparently unnecessary execution of an innocent, confused man pleading only for their help. Surely it's time to say "enough" to these people and get someone in charge who will rein them in and curb their excesses.

What's needed at the top of the RCMP is one very tough, very straight cop - not a bureaucratic insider with lifelong ties to the Conservatives.

This garbage has got to stop.

I have always respected the RCMP even though my admiration for the force got dented every now and then over the years. The homicide at Vancouver airport was the straw that broke this camel's back. I'm not saying it was murder or even manslaughter but it certainly was a homicide. That man was killed and for no good reason and there are people, including those who were nowhere near that airport that day, who should answer for it.

Something went horribly wrong. Were these officers not trained properly or did they ignore their training? Were they not fit to be trusted with the weapons we gave them and, if so, who chose to give them the weapons?

For my money, the cops involved ought to be treated as though they had drawn their service revolvers and shot that man to death. They ought to be in the prisoners dock. We also need to ensure that whatever infected them and made four fit, highly trained police officers believe they had some right to use that level of force on this man hasn't spread to the rest of the RCMP. It's time to call the cowboys into the corral for a long, blunt talk.

This is Canada and we act to a higher standard than others, including our closest neighbour. We're reluctant but not unwilling to have our police use force but, when they do use force, we expect it to be cautious and measured. We're entitled to expect nothing less than that standard from our national police force and they disgrace us when they abuse the trust we repose in them.

The same goes for our military which has been drawn into the American mentality of "kicking ass and taking names." The last I checked there was an abundance of ass-kickers and name-takers on this planet. They don't need our soldiers to swell their ranks. We expect our soldiers to at times use force but we also expect them to be cautious and measured in that. We should be entitled to expect that our soldiers won't call artillery and air strikes down on the innocent civilians in villages. We're entitled to expect that they will not surrender the suspects they apprehend into the hands of torturers. We're entitled to all of that and they too disgrace us when they abuse the trust we repose in them and do those things.

So let's hear from Hillier and let's hear from Elliott. Let them tell us why the services they oversee have brought disgrace onto this country. Let's hear them tell us what they will do to restore our trust in their services. Better yet, let's hear them do what honourable people in their situation are expected to do - take personal responsibility, apologize and resign.

Let's stop playing America's favourite game, "shoot'em up". Only in America could 9/11 happen and a needless, groundless invasion and occupation of a nation happen and an entire region be set on fire and no one take full responsibility for their abject failures. Tens, probably hundreds of thousands have died and many more will because of the hubris and incompetence of a few and yet that few refuses to accept any consequences for their acts. I don't want my country to descend into that mentality. The only way to avoid it is for heads to roll and offenders to answer for their actions.

It's going to be a lot easier to clean up these stains now than it will be down the road if we do nothing for by then they will surely spread.

We have to salvage some good from these miserable disasters. Otherwise those who've already fallen victim have endured their suffering for absolutely nothing. We can't bring Robert Dziekanski back but we don't have to let his name get tossed away in the garbage either. Let's not strip this guy of his dignity in death as we did in life. This is way past some lame review of how we use tasers. It's about standing up and being Canadian again.