Who is this W you are asking of.....?
But what's really troubling is the number of people who walked away unscathed:
Why wasn’t Ray Novak there to explain why both he and Nigel Wright advised Senator Duffy not to co-operate with the Deloitte audit?
And why did the Senate shut Duffy down when he wanted to go before the Senate audit committee or the Deloitte auditors to answer their questions and provide documentation?
What was Senator David Tkachuk thinking when he leaked information out of the Senate’s forensic audit to people who were being scrutinized? On April 16, 2013 Tkachuk told Duffy that auditors had discovered per diem claims for a ten-day period while the P.E.I. senator was on a cruise in Florida. The Deloitte audit itself was not officially released until 13 days later on April 29, 2013. Tkachuk was co-chair of the Internal Economy Board.
Finally, what business did Harper’s PMO have ordering and getting the removal of certain paragraphs from a Senate report? Here is how former Senate Clerk Gary O’Brien put it to the RCMP: “… Obviously it was, that was a political decision, that’s a political decision.” As for the PMO’s advice to Duffy to not co-operate with Deloitte, O’Brien found that to be “inappropriate” — and why wouldn’t he?
Regardless of your opinion of Duffy, the trial had nothing to do with Justice.
The problem with "political trials" is that they're show trials, staged events. That means the players have to go through the motions even if their hearts aren't into it.
A phone call to Ottawa to an old buddy who has sat in on most of the proceedings. A veteran lawyer and former judge. Turns out he was there for the cross-examination. I popped the question.
Old Friend volunteered that he spent a good deal of time observing the prosecutor's body language (it's a 'judge thing') and, to him, it seemed to confirm what he was hearing - the Crown is padding, marking time. It's filler. You can't go this long without at least putting in a couple of days, maybe three, of cross-examination lest people start talking about what was really going on. So you fling out a few things to give the scribblers something to file, to keep them distracted, and then you close.
Now Old Friend added that other Crown attorneys had mentioned that Duffy's prosecutor didn't like this case from the get-go. They all had the sense that this was a show trial orchestrated from Parliament Hill, A-Division and some accommodating folks at Queen's Park. The Crown is like a WWI infantry captain in the trenches. When the whistle blows it's up the ladder and over the top.
The Crown called the obligatory witnesses and Duffy's lawyer, sitting behind his Maxim gun, mowed'em down.
Old Friend also mentioned conversations he's had in recent months with some senior RCMP types who are fuming at the way their current commish, Bob Paulson, allowed his strings to be pulled by Harper's minions. With Ralph Goodale now at the helm as public safety minister, watch for Paulson to get the hook real soon.
Old Friend says it's all over, everyone including the judge is utterly exhausted with this nonsense. He says it's conceivable Duffy could be found guilty on two or three of the really minor charges but, then again, so could most of his fellow senators.
I asked whether the Crown might be holding something up his sleeve - rebuttal witnesses such as senators LeBreton, Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen to refute Duffy's otherwise uncontradicted evidence? Old Friend says the Crown knows what Don Bayne has waiting for those jokers if they ever get on the stand and at this point nobody wants to have to clean up the blood.
Even former Globe luminary, Geoffrey Stevens, was calling it a "show trial" (link is external) that had lost all purpose and meaning after the ouster of Harper in the last federal election. Stevens argued that Harper no longer needed the political smokescreen and the whole thing should be shut down.
