PMO Now Admits Benjamin Perrin's E-Mails Were NOT Deleted

Golly. It's a miracle I tell you. Remember how the Cons told us that Benjamin Perrin's e-mails had been deleted when he left the PMO?

So we couldn't determine what that PMO lawyer told Stephen Harper about the Duffy deal.

Well it turns out that was just another oops, or another Big Lie.

The federal government initially believed it had erased all of the e-mails belonging to lawyer Benjamin Perrin when he left the PMO last March. When the RCMP came looking for the communications as part of its investigation into a $90,000 payment to Mr. Duffy from former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright, it was told that the e-mails had been lost.

However, the PMO announced Sunday night that Mr. Perrin’s newly recovered e-mails would be provided to the RCMP “immediately.” While it is common practice in Ottawa to delete e-mails of departing PMO employees, Mr. Perrin’s e-mails had been protected because of ongoing litigation in an unrelated matter.

So now we might find out more about the Duffy Deal, and what Nigel Wright really meant when he said Stephen Harper told him the deal was good to go...



Mr. Wright wrote to Mr. Perrin and other government officials on Feb. 22 to state that he would talk to Prime Minister Stephen Harper about a five-point deal to settle the matter involving Mr. Duffy. “I do want to speak to the PM before everything is considered,” Mr. Wright wrote to Mr. Perrin and other staffers.

An hour later, Mr. Wright messaged back: “We are good to go from the PM once Ben [Perrin] has confirmation from [Mr. Duffy’s lawyer].”

Or how Stephen Harper can claim that he was only approving a plan to get Duffy to pay back what he owed with his own money?

Which never made sense eh? Why would you need a FIVE-POINT deal to do that?

And how can he explain that he knew NOTHING?

When so many Cons in his inner circle did...



And of course, the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic arm of the PMO, also has some explaining to do. Because although they want everyone to know, especially the RCMP, that they're really, REALLY sorry.

“We regret that we previously failed, even if inadvertently, to accurately inform you and the PMO about the availability of Mr. Perrin’s e-mails. We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused,” PCO official Isabelle Mondou wrote to the RCMP.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. For if you remember when reporters made an Access to Information request to try to get their hands on the Senate paper trail, the PCO claimed there wasn't one.

The Senate expenses scandal may have generated a lot of headlines this year, but apparently it hadn't prompted a single email, memo or even a sticky-note in Stephen Harper's own department by the height of the controversy in June.

The Privy Council website indicates a total of 23 such requests about the Senate had been processed by June. Every one of the requests yielded "zero" pages, and a notation that the information requested "does not exist."

When even Ol' Duff knew better....



And as we now know, according to the RCMP affidavit, there were more than TWO THOUSAND e-mails.

Which of course, leads to these obvious questions:

Are the sinister Con operatives in the PMO really THAT incompetent? Or was that also part of some massive COVER-UP?

And now that the PMO has "found" the Perrin e-mails, will the RCMP please determine whether any of them have been doctored? Or whether there is a mysterious gap in that e-mail chain, like there was in the Nixon tapes during the Watergate scandal.

Because as we all know, the Con fanatics in the PMO are capable of ANYTHING...



As is their depraved leader.

And of course all of the above leads to the Big Question: Will those newly "found" e-mails condemn Perrin, for failing to do his duty as a lawyer? Or will they condemn Harper?

And will Great Scandalous Leader still be able to claim that he knew NOTHING?

Golly. If I had heard about the Perrin e-mails a little earlier today I might have been able to run over to the Convention Centre in my neighbourhood, and asked Harper himself eh?

Because he was there singing for his supper, and announcing plans to visit Israel. 

And I would have loved to ask him whether that trip will be just another hollow exercise designed to distract us from the Senate scandal? Or in view of the latest revelations does he plan to remain there in EXILE?

Oh well. At least I know the meaning of that awesome sunset over Toronto the night before the Dark Lord visited the city...



Because I knew it had to be some kind of omen.

And I'm guessing, or at least hoping, it's this one eh?

The Senate scandal just got even MORE interesting.

Slowly but surely the Con story is falling apart. Or going up in flames.

The writing is in the sky.

And brighter days are coming...

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