The Legs on this just keep on multiplying.
Harper confidante Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen’s statement on Duffy audit ‘not consistent with facts’: RCMP | National Post
Whatever she thought, what she told them was that she and other Tory senators handled an audit into senators’ expenses without input from the prime minister’s office. S
he told the Mounties that she only recalled “communicating with Nigel Wright on one occasion, at a meeting at the end of April 2013, to provide an update on the audit process.”
The RCMP’s email record, though, shows that she was often exchanging emails with Wright and other officials in the PMO, that she was implementing their instructions.
She told the police: “No one gave her direction or orders to change the Senate Report.”
On March 1, though, the RCMP says, she sent Wright an email pledging fealty and complaining at being out of the loop: “Hi Nigel, just a quick note to say that I am always ready to do exactly what is asked but it would have been a great help to know in advance what the strategy was.”
Since the RCMP documents were released Wednesday, the prime minister has said nothing about this.
When Tom Mulcair asked about Stewart Olsen in question period, Harper replied by pointing at Duffy and Wright, and neither he nor anyone in his government has made a statement about her failure to be forthcoming with the police. So far as we know, they approve.
And consider that Sen. Irving Gerstein, the chief bagman for the Conservative party, called Michael Runia, a managing partner of Deloitte Canada, which benefits from millions of dollars in contracts from both the party and the government, to discuss the Duffy audit, according to police.
On March 21, after talking to Gerstein, PMO staffer Patrick Rogers wrote to Wright: “Any repayments will not change Deloitte’s conclusions because they were asked to opine on residency. However, they can’t reach a conclusion on residency because lawyer has not provided them anything.”