Premier McGuinty's staffer nicknamed hard drive wiping, court told

[spaminator]

Premier McGuinty's staffer nicknamed hard drive wiping, court told
By Sam Pazzano, Toronto Sun
First posted: Friday, October 20, 2017 12:17 PM EDT | Updated: Friday, October 20, 2017 01:03 PM EDT
TORONTO - A senior political staffer nicknamed a project to wipe clean computer hard drives — allegedly to erase data linked to the gas plants scandal — within the office of former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, court documents alleged Thursday.
Laura Miller, McGuinty’s former deputy chief of staff, who hired her common-law spouse Peter Faist, an outsider, for the job, dubbed the assignment “Pete’s Project.”
Miller and her boss, David Livingston, McGuinty’s then chief of staff, are accused of deliberately and illegally destroying relevant public records stemming from the billion-dollar gas plants cancellation boondoggle. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of breach of trust, mischief to data and unauthorized use of data.
Earlier, Crown attorney Sarah Egan said Miller and Livingston “acting together destroyed records that they had a legal duty to preserve.”
Egan said that days after Livingston obtained the passwords, purportedly so that he could delete personal information from his computer before exiting his job, Faist “began wiping the hard drives.”
Egan said Livingston even coached his staff on how to double delete e-mails to make sure they were really gone.
And in the two months before McGuinty handed over the premier’s office to Kathleen Wynne in 2013, thousands of computer files were wiped, Egan alleged.
The 180-page volume of documents, including emails between political staffers, were made an exhibit at trial on Thursday.
The name “Pete’s Project” appeared in the subject line of an email Miller sent to Livingston’s administrative assistant, Wendy Wait, on Jan. 24, 2013.
Wai was completely unaware of what “Pete’s Project” was, so she asked her boss about it.
“Good by me. Thanks!” answered Livingston.
spazzano@postmedia.com
Premier McGuinty's staffer nicknamed hard drive wiping, court told | Ontario | N
wonder if they asked hillary for advice.

 

[spaminator]

MANDEL: Former Liberal chief of staff sentenced to four months in gas plant scandal
Michele Mandel
More from Michele Mandel
Published:
April 11, 2018
Updated:
April 11, 2018 5:53 PM EDT
David Livingston, left, leaves court with supporters in Toronto, Friday, Jan.19, 2018. A one-time top political aide is set to find out his punishment today for destroying computer records related to Ontario's gas-plants fiasco.Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS
No one really expected that such a high political operative would get jail time.
But Justice Timothy Lipson wasn’t about to let Dalton McGuinty’s former chief of staff simply walk out a free man after finding him guilty of ordering the illegal deletion of documents related to the gas plant scandal that was threatening to topple the minority Liberal government.
Instead, to the surprise of many, David Livingston, 65, was handcuffed and led away to serve a four-month sentence behind bars for one count of unauthorized use of a computer.
Not that his incarceration lasted very long. His lawyer Brian Gover was at Osgoode Hall within hours successfully arguing that the 65-year-old Livingston should be free on bail pending his appeal.
David Livingston, chief of staff to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, arrives at court in Toronto on Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. (Colin Perkel/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
So this bad news story for the Liberals, just a few months away from a provincial election, still won’t go away.
Once again, it reminds us all of Liberal scandals past — the backdrop to Livingston’s crime was the government’s controversial decision to kill two locally unpopular gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga, a move that will ultimately cost Ontario taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next 20 years.
Livingston was chief of staff for McGuinty for nine months into 2013, including the period when the embattled premier resigned and passed the baton to Kathleen Wynne. Neither McGuinty nor Wynne were implicated in the criminal trial.
The opposition parties and the media were hammering for information on how much the cancellations were going to cost taxpayers. As the judge noted in convicting Livingston in January, “no issues were more challenging or dangerous to the minority Liberal government than those related to the gas plant controversy.”
In full-out crisis mode and damage control, Livingston hired his deputy’s boyfriend to “wipe data from 20 computers in the Office of the Premier … to ensure that no records remained on those computers that were responsive to either a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOI) request or a future Production Order of a Standing Committee of the Legislature inquiring into the gas plant controversy.”
If that weren’t serious enough, Lipson was also critical of Livingston for “misling” the province’s most senior civil servant to gain access to the computers in the office of the premier by saying he only wanted to delete personal information when his “true plan was to eliminate sensitive and confidential work-related data.”
His crime was “very serious” and strikes at the heart of the democratic process, the judge said.
“His conduct was an affront to and an attack upon democratic institutions and values,” Lipson noted in his hour-long decision. “An attempt to tamper with the democratic process requires a strong denunciatory response. The judicial system has a duty to protect the democratic process from attempts, such as occurred here, to undermine its proper functioning.”
Gover had urged the judge to give Livingston a conditional discharge, suggesting the otherwise highly-regarded professional and first-time offender had already suffered enough in the court of public opinion. He’d also lost his job as a consultant with a major Toronto law firm and will now be inadmissible to the U.S. where his family has a Florida home.
The Ontario court judge acknowledged the offence was out of character for Livingston but said a conditional discharge was “entirely disproportionate to the seriousness of his conduct and his high degree of responsibility.”
He also rejected the Crown’s proposal for six to 12 months imprisonment as too harsh. But he said a jail term — rather than a conditional sentence served in the community — was necessary to send a strong message to political operatives who might have similar views to those of Livingston.
“He called the legal obligation to disclose ‘political bullshit,’” Lipson complained. “He thought the power of the (Standing) Committee to compel production (of relevant documents) was ‘ridiculous.’”
Contrary to defence arguments, the judge didn’t accept that Livingston’s criminal conduct can be blamed on inexperience or political naivete. Instead, he was a “politically sophisticated government actor” willing to get his hands dirty.
As Lipson noted, Livingston had been warned that the only type of organization that wipes its records is a criminal organization. He gave the order anyway.
And now that organization is seeking re-election in eight weeks.
mmandel@postmedia.com
MANDEL: Former Liberal chief of staff sentenced to four months in gas plant scandal | Toronto Sun

 

[Danbones]

Yup scandals like this displayed just prior and into selection times are a signal of the incoming change of the guard.