senator Duffy goes to court.
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yeah, I know old age just wrecks the hearing, I'm not quite there yet but so many around me are ... s'okay though, red is my colour...love red, it's the colour of love and especially love knowing that I leave you speechless.... ♥
love to give you greenies for my reddies..hope you are okay with that
seeking information or profile on the audiences Senator Duffy was entertaining on behalf to the Conservative party.HELP!
He was simply a speaker at various gatherings were he would rally the voters to get out and vote and raise cash, for the cons of course. He actually performed that aspect well but somehow CTV's Robert Fife broke the story on Duffs spending habits which is showing us how broken the 'no set rules' Senate is.........
Long before his fraud and bribery trial started, Senator Mike Duffy suggested he had explosive evidence about the role of the Prime Minister’s Office in his case. It was a set up, Duffy said, a “monstrous scheme.”
No explosion has occurred, but a loud bang did sound from the court last week as new evidence emerged tying the prime minister’s office more closely to the attempted cover up of Duffy’s expense problems.
Until now, the trial has dealt only with Duffy’s questionable expenses and the Senate’s role in enforcing, or not, its permissive spending rules. It has further damaged the Red Chamber’s reputation, but barely mentioned Stephen Harper’s inner circle.
No more. The emails and interview transcripts illuminate the determined efforts by the Conservatives to foil an independent audit and hide Duffy’s problems from Canadians.
In early 2013, audit firm Deloitte was set to report its findings on the expense, travel and residency claims of Duffy and other senators. Duffy had gone ballistic, demanding that Senate Conservatives ensure he wasn’t tainted by the report.
He argued that the PMO knew very well that he lived in Ottawa. It had cleared him to take a seat as a P.E.I. senator. To Duffy’s thinking, that entitled him to make claims for a “secondary residence” in Ottawa.
In the hours before the report was to be released, Conservative senators David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, along with senior PMO staffers, were embroiled in discussions about Deloitte’s findings.
These PMO aides weren’t lowly clerks. Key operators, including chief of staff Nigel Wright, political advisor Chris Woodcock, press spokesman Andrew MacDougall, principal secretary Ray Novak and Joanne McNamara, Wright’s deputy, were all in the loop.
They and the two senators agreed to manipulate the Deloitte report to mollify Duffy and as Wright put it in an email, “to prevent him from going squirrely in a bunch of weekend panel shows.”
Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen then set about making changes in the report to remove references to Duffy’s travel between Ottawa and P.E.I. and his residency in the capital, according to two Senate administrators who were interviewed by the RCMP.
Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen made the changes without informing Senator George Furey, the only Liberal on the Senate’s internal steering committee. Furey won’t discuss the matter, citing legal advice. But I’m told he was furious at Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen for making the changes behind his back.
Jill Anne Joseph, the Senate’s director of internal audit, told the Mounties that Stewart Olsen’s objective on the Duffy case “was not to get to the truth of the matters . . . her consideration seemed to be more like, what’s the media going to do with this information?”
Stewart Olsen is a former Harper press spokesperson and senator from New Brunswick, who also had lived in Ottawa for many years and claimed expenses for a “secondary residence” there, much like Duffy did.
While this was going on, the prime minister insisted, and did so for many months, that nobody in his office knew about the Duffy matter. When it emerged that many did know, Harper fell back on insisting that he wasn’t informed. That hasn’t been disproven.
But what has been proven is that the Duffy case occupied the attention and efforts of people near the top of the PMO, the Senate and the Conservative Party. The first instinct of all those involved was to manipulate, distract and cover up the embarrassing facts about their star senator and fundraiser.
Neither the government nor the party are on trial, but these facts gathered by dispassionate investigators from the RCMP blow holes in the claims by all those Conservatives that they acted in the public interest at every step.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair calls it obstruction of justice. That’s a stretch. But it was certainly manipulation, lying and the attempted concealment of potential wrongdoing by a public official. That’s bad enough.
LEGER: Duffy’s troubles and PMO’s coverup | The Chronicle Herald
Alberta Girl @AlbertaGrl I can feel the excitement across the land!! It's #NigelWrightDay. The Harper haters are quivering with anticipation! #Duffy #cdnpoli
ن Bossy BlueGood ن @BlueGood2 @AlbertaGrl & the Media Party getting 'tingles up their legs'... #cdnpoli #exln42 Mac Harb, not so much.. @sunlorrie
and the Trudeau and Liberal haters are wetting their pants with orgasmic glee when they get to expose a flaw while ignoring the multiple flaws of their hero.
Lorrie GoldsteinVerified account @sunlorrie Still wondering how Mike Duffy could be charged with accepting a bribe that no one was charged with giving him. But I'm no lawyer. #cdnpoli
Bill Brasky @Polkameister ISIS claimed responsibility for murdering 67 innocent civilians today in a bombing. Now you know why Cdn. media is all #DuffyTrial
anyway, blue jays are on 11 game win streak...jingle shiny keys and such. mike who?
Manny Montenegrino @manny_ottawa Never happened in any political office in the World:
1. COS pays back from his own $ 90K to taxpayers
2. Leader has to deal with horrid act
Lorrie GoldsteinVerified account @sunlorrie If you believe Stephen Harper knew about the $90,000 cheque, then you believe Dalton McGuinty knew about the deleted emails, right Liberals?
Todd Banks @Banks_Todd Where #LPC MP John Cannis caught defrauding taxpayers, forced to repay $106,842. No criminal charges.
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2013/05/23/liberals-are-hypocritical-in-blasting-senate-scandal-james-moore …
@ralphgoodale
Manny Montenegrino @manny_ottawa Hilarious!! Media/Liberals upset Duffy didn't pay $90K himself. But no Media/Liberal cares or is asking who's paying for $1M #DuffyTrial
liberuls. :lol:
TNorrisSG @TNorrisYEG Mulcair talks about Duffy, but kept knowledge of bribery silent for 15 years. #cdnpoli #elxn42
http://pllqt.it/UBIcrT
Colby Cosh: If there’s a scandal in the Duffy affair, why can’t I spot it?
Colby Cosh: If there’s a scandal in the Duffy affair, why can’t I spot it? | National Post
Colby Cosh: If there’s a scandal in the Duffy affair, why can’t I spot it? | National Post
Of course the result of the Duffy trial is that we are getting closer to Harpers truthiness as to whether he knew about the payment or not.
Let's not forget he said he did not know about it........
Despite the mounting testimony that many more people in his office knew about the Wright cheque than Stephen Harper said, he continues to maintain he had no prior knowledge of the cheque until the media coverage of the story.
There’s an email exchange between Christopher Rootham, Mr. Duffy’s lawyer at the time he was negotiating with Mr. Wright over the repayment of his housing expenses. When Mr. Wright finally cut the $90,000 cheque, Mr. Rootham, advised Mr. Duffy to treat it as payment of a contract, not a gift, in order to meet the Senate’s conflict of interest rules.
He also said this might help Mr. Duffy from possibly being charged under Section 16 of the Parliament of Canada Act which prohibits senators from receiving money in relation to any “controversy”. The act also prohibits anyone from offering money in such circumstances.
Mr. Rootham advised Mr. Duffy if there were any allegations that he’d run a foul of the Parliament Act “. . .you will deny that you received compensation in respect of a controversy before the Senate, that any arrangement that was made was bona fide and legal.”
Paying for silence: Mike Duffy trial leaves many unanswered questions - Columnists - The Guardian
Curious since Cosh admits, in the same gut-busting column, that he hasn’t been paying much attention to the trial. Maybe he should start.
https://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/28/something-rotten-circling-the-drain-dissecting-the-duffy-scandal/
If the Duffy affair was no big deal, why all the effort to hide it?
Andrew Coyne: If the Duffy affair was no big deal, why all the effort to hide it?
Are you serious?
Are you not paying attention?
Is that you Earl?
Do we have to start from the beginning?
I'll explain this like you are 5.
Once upon a time the Prime Minister Office of PM Harper decided they wanted to kick a Senator named Duffy out because he was the worst of the abusers that hadn't yet been charged with such abuse and the PMO did not want to have one of Mr Harpers 'hand picked' Senators appear in the same light as serial abuser, Liberal Senator Marc Harb, who was already awaiting a court date.
The PMO asked Mr Duffy, in private, before the public was aware of his abuse to leave the Senate but Duffy said "no, I have committed no wrongs as their are no spending guidelines", to which, he may be correct, but that is up to the Court to decide.
The PMO, not wanting to have Duffs issues become public knowledge and embarrass Mr Harper, who vowed to reform the Senate, chose to pay Duffy's over spending tab of 90,000. to hide this embarrassment from the Canadian public.
The RCMP discovered this payment but all in the PMO and Mr Harper denied any knowledge of such a payment, excepting Mr Wright.
As the court case thus far has shown, many people knew about the payment which means they were lying.........
