Well he can run but he can't hide. Everywhere Chicken Harper goes he is dogged by the Duffy scandal.
And asked to answer the latest burning question:
If his beloved aide Ray Novak knew all about the attempted cover-up and Nigel Wright's scheme to pay off Ol' Duff, why did he stay silent and allow Con cabinet ministers to lie like thieves?
And why hasn't Harper fired him?
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper fielded more questions about the Mike Duffy affair while on the campaign trail Sunday, particularly over the apparent involvement of his current chief of staff Ray Novak.
An Ottawa court heard on Thursday that, in an email sent on March 23, 2013, Wright — Harper's chief of staff at the time — wrote to Novak and the lawyer for the Prime Minister's Office saying, "I will send my cheque on Monday."
Especially if Novak, as Harper would have us believe, kept him in the dark as well.
At a campaign stop in Ottawa on Sunday, CBC News reporter Hannah Thibedeau asked Harper why Novak hadn't been reprimanded for "knowingly" allowing the Conservative leader to "repeat a lie for months" that Duffy had repaid his own expenses.
But of course Harper could only dodge the question, because our ghastly Batty Man rather not draw attention to his very close working relationship with his beloved Robin...
Lest more Canadians understand that the two men have been so close for so long that it is beyond the realm of reality to believe that everything Ray knew he didn't share with Steve.
And that this explanation from the grubby flak Kory Teneyke is so unbelievable.
Earlier this week, a Conservative spokesman said that Novak never opened the email from Wright because he had been pulled away for a conference call.
That like all the other Con alibis, as Michael Harris points out, it requires its own supporters to suspend disbelief.
From Paul Calandra to Nigel Wright, the political washing machine is always set on spin. But the real question arising out of Nigel Wright’s laundered account of the Wright/Duffy Affair is this: what is a self-respecting Conservative Party-loving Kool-Aid drinker to do faced with so many inconvenient truths?
Even though it should be clear to even them that Harper's already shabby reputation is taking a beating.
As the light of day from the Duffy trial floods the subfusc landscapes of Harper’s political operation, complete with lying, tapping into a forensic audit before it was complete, and changing a Senate report to suit the political requirements of the PMO, the person who looks the worst is the prime minister himself. Mr. Accountability is nowhere to be found, and Mr. Transparency never has materialized.
And that as Dan Leger points out, the real Duffy scandal is the PMO cover-up.
If anything has been proven by Nigel Wright’s testimony at the fraud and bribery trial of Sen. Mike Duffy, it’s that all the prime minister’s men and women did everything they could to cover it all up.
At no time did anyone raise the question of what was the right thing or the ethical thing to do. And maybe that’s the real scandal in the Duffy case. Not that a senator claimed inappropriate expenses but that the most senior levels of the Conservative government were willing to hide it, lie about it and force others to do the same.
For there can now be no doubt that it was a cover-up, and that as the leader of the PMO plumbers Stephen Harper is Canada's Nixon...
He may not be driven from office by the legal system, and he may not resign because he is shameless. But the end result will be the same.
This scandal can only get bigger and more damaging.
Over the coming days, the Conservatives’ (or Cons as they are increasingly becoming justifiably known) problems will only get worse. New emails are about to emerge backing up claims made by Duffy in his speech to the Senate, and new witnesses will take the stand who know what really happened — including the PM’s former legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin.
And if anyone ever leaks the emails on PMO staffers’ personal accounts, or their Blackberry PINS, the roof could cave in on this crowd in a heartbeat.
It will degrade him further.
And it will help us destroy them...
Chris Sigurdson
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2 comments:
Now I wonder about every single last one of his/their/Con's appointments.
Credibility and lack of ethics and all.
Too bad Nigel didn't listen to that little voice, that said "this is going to end
badly." It was his conscience.
The PMO is quite simply rotten to the core.
JD
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