Mike Duffy and the Final Agony of Stephen Harper

Oh dear, I see that the Mike Duffy trial just keeps on getting messier for the Cons.

Yesterday Ol' Duff claimed that Stephen Harper couldn't be trusted.

Now he's going after the Con senator David Tkachuk.

Telling the court that Tkachuk told him to claim every expense he could.

On his second day of testimony at his criminal trial, Senator Mike Duffy told the court that Conservative Senator David Tkachuk instructed him it was essential he claim every expense he was entitled to, even for food, while living in his Ottawa house.

Otherwise, Tkachuk told Duffy, critics, including a P.E.I. professor who wrote a newspaper op-ed about what he said was Duffy’s lack of qualification to sit as a P.E.I. senator, would continue to question his legitimacy as an occupant of the Red Chamber.

And although Ol' Dave is denying that.

He too has a credibility problem. 

A group of senators, including a Conservative, say senators David Tkachuk and Marjory LeBreton should step down from a committee that will deal with the fall-out of the Auditor General's report into Senate expenses.

The senators say, given what happened two years ago, they are not comfortable allowing Tkachuk and Lebreton to handle the next group of senators with problematic expenses

The senators say they are also concerned about recently released RCMP court documents that suggest Tkachuk and LeBreton were in close contact with the Prime Minister's Office while they were handling the Duffy case.

And as even John Ibbotson admits, none of this is good for Stephen Harper's legacy. 



The legacy of Stephen Harper’s government, at least in part, ends with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a groan, as Mike Duffy finally testifies in his marathon fraud trial.

The best is still to come.

There is much more to come – about Nigel Wright’s infamous cheque and the circumstances leading up to it, about how the senator convinced himself he could claim to live in PEI and file travel expenses when in fact he lived in Ottawa, and about his relationship with the former prime minster generally.

And for Harper and his humiliated Cons it will be AGONY...



For Conservative true believers, these days of testimony will be agony, as Mr. Duffy dredges up some of the Harper government’s dirtiest laundry.

And it couldn't be a more fitting end to a sordid story.

Ol' Duffy came back to remind Harper how close they once were.

And they both went down together...



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