The Shadow of Steve Harper Hangs Over Doctored Duffy Audit Report

Nigel, I need to see you in my lair.

It sounds like damned near everyone in the Harper PMO was in on the plan to bail out cash-cow-senator Mike Duffy.  And that plan included corrupting the Senate audit process to "protect" the Cavendish Cottager.

The Senate administration had hired the auditing firm Deloitte to look into the expense claims of senators Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb, as well as those of Mr. Duffy. But the PMO and senior Conservative officials defended Mr. Duffy in the early stages of the controversy, in order to keep him quiet.

“A purpose of this is to put Mike in a different bucket and to prevent him from going squirrely in a bunch of weekend panel shows,” former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright said in an e-mail to colleagues on Feb. 7, 2013.

Mr. Wright’s e-mail, which went to PMO colleagues Chris Woodcock, Ray Novak, Andrew MacDougall and Joanne McNamara, added: “Mike is very pleased with this so it will give us a little bit of time if [Conservative senator David Tkachuk] can pull it off.”

In an e-mail on the same day, Chris Montgomery, a staffer in Conservative senator Marjory LeBreton’s office, told Mr. Wright a plan to get outside legal advice on Mr. Duffy’s residency issues was designed to “protect senator Duffy.”

The newly released documents reinforce the notion the PMO and the Conservative Party initially went to great lengths to contain the political damage flowing from expenses claimed by Mr. Duffy after his 2008 appointment to the Senate.

The Globe & Mail account mistakenly contends that Duffy became persona non grata with the Harper regime when it was discovered that Nigel Wright had coughed up $90-grand.  That's a red herring.  The Duffy-Harper split came following the leak of Duffy's ill-advised e-mail to as yet unidentified confidantes in which he boasted of the PMO bail out deal.  It was when that e-mail fell into the hands of CTV's Bob Fife that Duffy's usefulness to Harper crashed and burned.  No leak - no scandal - business as usual.  

According to the RCMP, a number of Conservative senators and PMO officials secretly discussed the confidential Deloitte audit when it was nearing completion on May 7, 2013. The following day, Mr. Tkachuk and his Conservative colleague, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, managed to delete key passages of the report by bypassing the normal Senate committee process.

“The report, we’ve learned through the investigation, had made its ways to the PMO, to their office, and, I guess, revisions, what they wanted to have written in the report, was done,” Corporal Jolette told Mr. O’Brien during their interview. “Throughout our investigation, like I said, we’ve learned that PMO has had a lot of communication with the diverse senators who were involved in these committees and sub-committees.”

Mr. O’Brien confirmed that he received a visit at his offices on May 8 from Mr. Tkachuk, before a Senate sub-committee held a formal discussion on the Deloitte audit.

“Senator Tkachuk came in here after 4 [p.m.], he wanted to look at this and he reviewed it and he said, ‘Carolyn and I would like two more changes,’” Mr. O’Brien told the RCMP.

Mr. O’Brien said the portions of the report that were deleted referred to Mr. Duffy’s travels between Ottawa and PEI and his “continued presence in Ottawa,” which raised questions about the legitimacy of his expense claims.

“That was a confidential report, I’m surprised it was shared so widely,” Mr. O’Brien added about the PMO’s involvement in the matter.

Now, through all this, you must believe that the greatest micro-manager in Canadian prime ministerial history knew virtually nothing about the chicanery going on in the adjacent office that bears his name, the Prime Minister's Office. What a load of bullshit.

Oopsie. And the Walls Come Tumblin' Down.

The irony is utterly delicious.

The Crown in the Duffy trial has introduced a very interesting proposition using Justin Bieber to make the point.

The Crown's contention is that you cannot be a senator unless, at the time of appointment, you are duly resident in the province you are to represent.  Mr. Holmes used the example of the requirement that senators be 30-years of age when he asked the Senate law clerk whether, had 21-year old Bieber been given a Senate appointment, the law would deem him to be 30.  Of course not.

So the Crown's theory is that, if you're not already resident at the date of appointment, your appointment is invalid.

Oopsie!

Let's chat about Harper loyalist and former personal aide, now senator for New Brunswick, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen - the one who dutifully helped launder Duffy's Senate audit report.  For years she lived and worked as a nurse in the Ottawa area.  Unlike Duffy, who actually owned property - land and a cottage - in Prince Edward Island at the time of his appointment, apparently Stewart-Olsen didn't get her residence in New Brunswick until several months after taking her seat in the Senate.

Wowser.

By the Crown's theory. Stewart-Olsen's appointment was even less valid than Duffy's which could mean her residency expense claims are every bit as fraudulent as Duffy's.

Wow, slap the bracelets on the honourable senator for New Brunswick.

Expect to hear more about this when Stewart-Olsen answers her subpoena to testify.  The ironic part is the role she played as Harper's handmaiden in driving Duffy out of the Senate.  I wonder what her residence stats were before the Duffy scandal began?  Bring on the forensic auditors.

Because You Really Can't Tell the Players Without a Programme

The Duffy trial is just about a week away.  It seems like forever since the scandal broke plunging Harper's PMO and the Senate into a fearful rout.

To get you back up to speed on the scandal and all the players, National Post has published a dandy primer on the Who's Who of the witnesses expected to be called at trial.

There's a big bag full of names some of which, by the time this trial is over, you'll probably hope never to hear again.

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."

Cat Fight - Wallin Fingers LeBreton, Stewart-Olsen

Senator Pam Wallin claims she's the victim of a vendetta against her by two Tory senators resentful of her high profile - Marjory LeBreton and Carolyn Stewart-Olsen.

Ms. Wallin said she was targeted by Marjory LeBreton, then the leader of the government in the Senate, and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Mr. Harper’s former press secretary before joining the Senate, because she was outspoken in caucus and occasionally critical of the government. “They resented me because I was an activist senator,” Ms. Wallin told the Senate Wednesday.

The former broadcaster, who has paid back more than $150,000 in improperly claimed travel expenses, said the motion to dump her from the Senate that has been made by Government Senate Leader Claude Carignon is politically motivated.

“The real intent is to remove a perceived liability – namely me,” said Ms. Wallin. The aim, she said, is to appease the Conservatives who will meet at a party convention at the end of this month. They and other Canadians are angry, she said, after media reports inflamed public opinion. Those reports were based on 14 leaks from  senators, said Ms. Wallin.

Wallin's contention that jealous Tory senators were gunning for her is, in fact, plausible.  Long before the current scandals erupted it was known that the newcomers' celebrity and rise to prominence was resented by the Old Guard has-beens like LeBreton.  Little things like Harper calling Duffy his "most valuable" senator really grated on them.

In the meantime, LeBreton has been dumped as Tory Senate leader and today Stewart-Olsen resigned from the internal economy committee.

Duffy's First Appearance in the Court of Public Opinion

Mike Duffy's counsel may have declared war on the Harper government yesterday.  Today it's Duffy's turn to take the battle onto the floor of the Senate.

My guess is that Duffy will deliver a carefully scripted statement that will put the Senate itself and especially Harper's senatorial henchmen on trial in the Court of Public Opinion.  LeBreton, Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen, Harper's senatorial front bench,  are logical targets.   If Duffy is prosecuted, the trio will play an integral if unwilling role in his defence.  He will implicate each of them in whatever wrongdoing he is claimed to have committed. 

Duffy may also seek to show the Senate is being used as a smokescreen for the prime minister and his PMO.  If he chooses his words well, as I suspect he will, he can probably persuade an already skeptical public that the real villains who should be suspended are those pushing for his own ouster.

Bombshells?  There could be one or two but I wouldn't count on it.   This is not the time to be sacrificing a knight or a bishop, not when a pawn will do.

A couple of Tweets from former Mulroney chief of staff, Norman Spector:

-   Does anyone truly think Duffy would have agreed to Wright's plan if he didn't think Wright was speaking for Harper?

-   There's something vaguely behind-the-iron curtain-during-the-Cold-War about all the maneuvering surrounding the Duffy affair