Hunting Harper

The RCMP appears eager, perhaps too eager, to see senator Pam Wallin charged with fraud and breach of trust.  Curiously, we haven't heard a peep about prosecuting senator Mike Duffy.  Fact is, that day may never come.

As we know, the prime minister's office saw swept clean of any trace of the Wright-Duffy-Harper under-the-table cash scandal.  There's no correspondence,  no e-mails, not so much as a phone message slip or a post-it note.

Duffy's lawyer, responding to an RCMP request for documents, has apparently handed over 200-pages of e-mails, correspondence and other records.  By some accounts that's about a quarter of the materials to hand.

Now, if you were representing the Cavendish Cottager and determined to keep him from facing criminal charges and if you possessed, as Duffy's lawyer Don Bayne claims, materials that directly implicate the prime minister, would you ensure those documents reached the hands of investigating officers and, eventually, Crown prosecutors?  I sure would.

Imagine if the Crown eventually did decide to prosecute Duffy.   That procedure involves the prosecution making 'discovery' of all evidence relevant to the case to the accused's counsel.   On that list would have to be the incriminating documents you yourself had handed over.   Then the investigators and prosecutors would be on the spot, having to account for what they did with that information.

It's going to be pretty hard to take Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy down and not Stephen Harper if he was also a party to it.   You just can't erase the prime minister from the record.

Bad enough that Wright-Duffy-Harper is being investigated by the RCMP's "sensitive investigation" section, a title that fairly reeks of privilege and favour.  Of course only the RCMP and Don Bayne (and probably a few others) know just what documents have been turned over and what is in them but it's conceivable that Stephen Harper might just have been added to the suspects list.

Duffy's Docs

Senator Mike Duffy's lawyer, Don Bayne, has reportedly handed over hundreds of pages of documents to RCMP investigators thought to be relevant to the Wright-Duffy-Harper affair.   The RCMP asked, they got.

It's said that Duffy may have up to 800-pages of e-mails, correspondence and other records pertaining to the under-the-table PMO cash deal.   Duffy's lawyer - and others who have read them - claim they directly implicate Stephen Harper in the backroom wheeling and dealing.   As one of those who read them put it, some of the documents have "Stephen Harper's fingerprints all over them."

Some of those who have known Duffy going back to the very early 70s wonder why he remained mute all summer.  They think that, even at that stage, Duffy wanted to protect his prime minister.  It seems Nigel Wright has also been unwilling to fight back against Stephen Harper but it's believed that Wright draws the line at lying for the prime minister or facing possible jail time for him.

At this point, no one seems to trust anyone else.  There's something of a standoff underway among the principals.  Harper's denunciations of Wright and Duffy recently may have been a calculated but nonetheless bad gamble.

Oh, don't worry about Duffy's docs mysteriously going missing.  I'm sure the cops weren't handed the originals and, besides, there are copies being held in safe keeping.

Stephen Harper's "rush to flush" Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy down the Senate dumper was as obvious as it was odious.  TorStar's Thomas Walkin writes that the suspensions were Harper's desperate hope to make it all go away even as the flames of scandal begin to lick at the prime minister's feet.  That wont work.

Is Stephen Harper On the Ropes? Why Has Duffy Stopped Punching?

Stephen Harper doesn't give the impression that he's in dire straits but then again, when you're surrounded by jackals of your own making, it's a bad idea to let them smell fear.

Still, judging by media accounts, Shifty's homegrown nemesis, Mike Duffy, is winning the credibility war with the Canadian public.

Shifty Steve has not been helping himself.  He can't even keep his lies straight, changing his story as time passes.  Most of us realize that someone who inexplicably keeps changing his story is, well, lying.   We have that pretty much figured out before we leave high school.

To make matters worse, Shifty relies on nothing more than bare denials or awkwardly tries to change the subject.  That doesn't work for many people either.

Duffy, on the other hand, has a competing account that comports with the known facts.  That's always a good thing when somebody is accusing you of bad things. That doesn't make him endearing or even particularly likable but this isn't a popularity contest.  It's a credibility contest between Mike Duffy and Shifty Steve Harper.  Liking is not an issue.

Duffy also has a little something else.   He has documents - memos, e-mails, cheque stubs and that sort of thing.   So far they also seem to corroborate Duffy's narrative, not Shifty's.   Duffy has already tossed out a few documents, the "tip of the iceberg" he claims, and promises more to come.  His lawyer, senior criminal counsel Don Bayne, says there are documents that tie Shifty directly to the under-the-table cash deal between Duffy and Nigel Wright.

This is where Duffy is beginning to become somewhat less likable.  If he has smoking gun documents,  as Duffy and his lawyer (and others) claim, why isn't he producing them?   The public is already accepting Duffy's credibility over Shifty's.
Any prize fighter who has his opponent on the ropes as Duffy plainly does goes in for the kill.  Documents with Shifty's fingerprints all over them would be the haymaker Duffy needs to put the prime minister down for the count.  So what exactly is the Cavendish Cottager waiting for?

It strikes me that, once you have announced you have the goods on the other guy, it all begins to look fishy when you keep that to yourself.   Duffy has claimed he was extorted, by threat of losing his Senate seat if he balked, into accepting what would seem to have been a cash bribe with strings and inducements attached.  Yet by not releasing the smoking gun documents it creates the impression that Duffy might be using them for some sort of shakedown of his own.

Ask yourself what awaits Mike Duffy at the end of this scandal?  He's hopelessly damaged goods.  He'll be Typhoid Mike within Conservative circles.  He's burned his bridges to the only paying job he ever knew.  Hard to imagine anyone opening up a pundit slot for Old Duff.   Money, apparently, is still a big issue.  He's got a hefty mortgage on his modest house and just about zero in the bank (how that happened after so many years at CBC and CTV is unclear).   Mike seems to be staring into the abyss of penury.  For a high flyer like Duffy that's got to be alarming.

Could he be trying the back channels to shop those documents to some newsie outfit for an exclusive?   Is he hoping there might be a book in this?  Is he scouting around for a highest bidder?

It might do well for Duffy to realize that, for many if not most Canadians, he's become "my enemy's enemy" and that carries a few drawbacks also.   If he really wants to distance himself from Harper, it's getting time to put up or shut up.

How Will Duffy Speak from the Political Grave?

The rush to suspend senators Brazeau, Wallin and Duffy from the Senate has almost nothing to do with Wallin or Brazeau and everything to do with that troublesome priest, Mike Duffy.

Although he's far from a latter day Beckett, Duffy defies his own king's throne and power and must be squashed like a rather porky bug.  Harper wants him gone, disappeared, before the Conservative convention in Calgary this weekend.

Here's a thought.  Harper's stooges can suspend Duffy from the Senate.  They've already turfed him from the Tory caucus.  But doesn't that still leave him a member in good standing of the Conservative Party of Canada?  Doesn't that entitle him to attend the party convention this weekend?   He might have to pay his own expenses, granted, but I suppose there are at least a few who would gladly cover that too.

Ooh, ooh child.   Can you picture Duffy strolling across the floor of the convention, making the rounds of the hospitality suites, attracting at least a few supporters?  I can.   Can you imagine the cellphone videos of convention security strongarming the heart-weakened Duffy off the floor?  Oh my, my, wouldn't that be a sight fit for a king?

Yet, if Harper does raise the drawbridge and flood the moat of the Centre Block to keep Duffy out, what's the poor senator to do to keep tabling documents into the parliamentary record?   There's probably not another Tory senator willing to risk a severe mauling from the PMO.  No one wants a touch of Shifty Steve's lash.

Maybe it's time to take the scandal right where Shifty lives, onto the floor of the House of Commons.   Maybe there are a few stalwarts in the Opposition ranks who would be happy enough to continue the heavy lifting in Duffy's absence, who knows?   Maybe Mondays could become Scandal Day in the Commons.   And, if Shifty decides to absent himself on Mondays, then it can always be deferred to Tuesday or Wednesday - whatever, the guy can't be seen to be hiding forever, what would the neighbours say?

Duffy spoke of "a trail of e-mails" that have yet to be made public and that could turn into Shifty Steve's very own "trail of tears."  Question Period plus e-mails plus TV cameras - what's not to like?

Benjamin Perrin's Awkward Situation

Former PMO chief counsel and Harper personal legal advisor, Benjamin Perrin, has been laying low since he abruptly left Ottawa and hightailed it back to the security of his teaching position at the University of British Columbia law faculty.

If you're looking for keys to unlock the Wright-Duffy-Harper affair, Perrin is a pretty good place to start.  When he beat feet he paused to claim he was not "in on it".  He had nothing to do with it, knew nothing about any cheque.  He was simply pining for the fjords of the West Coast.

According to Wright, that's wrong.   The former chief of staff says Perrin in fact was in the know.  He might have even been a player.

The saga, as I understand it, is that Wright's cheque was delivered from the PMO to the offices of Duffy's then lawyer at Ottawa's Nelligan firm.   She is said to have done what conscientious lawyers do with these things and deposited the cheque to her firm's trust account as I long suspected she would have done.  And, as I assumed way back when, the cheque came with a letter of undertakings. Lawyers do those sorts of things, they just can't help themselves.  That letter may have been signed by Wright but it wasn't drafted by him.  You see where this is going...

As chief counsel in the PMO, Perrin was Stephen Harper's personal legal advisor. That's what is called a 'solicitor and client relationship.'   Believe it or not, there are entire legal digests, volume upon volume full of endless numbers of case reports of court decisions dealing with the relationship between the solicitor and the client.   What exactly is the duty?  How far does it extend?  Where do you draw the lines?  What are the ethical parameters and rules?   Some points are esoteric.  Some of them are pretty plain.

Fortunately there's nothing particularly complex or esoteric in the immediate situation.   Nothing at all.   Unless you know that, at the very least, Stephen Harper already knows all about Wright's cheque to Duffy or you have been told by your client not to tell him anything about it, you have an absolute professional obligation to inform the client all about it even before the cheque goes out.

Especially now that he's been outed by Wright and may have been a party to the Duffy-Wright business, we need to have a chat with Benjamin Perrin.  A very serious chat.  And, for the purposes of clearing his own good name, Stephen Harper should waive solicitor-client privilege concerning this matter.  Of course to do that Steve would have to emerge from his bunker of secrecy and then he might get exposed to sunlight and his skin would catch fire and he would melt.