Mistress was offered $1,000 for photos
Screenshots of an online conversation between former Conservative MP Tony Clement and a young woman with whom he had an affair show that she was offered a bribe in exchange for dirt on him by “a group of women who have been harmed by him” and who claimed to have “organizational support with the liberals.”
“And can offer compensation for each photo you send $1000 each. Especially if they are more explicit,” the contact said.
There is no evidence the online campaign, if it existed beyond these exchanges, had anything to do with the Liberal party. Spokesman Parker Lund said flatly on Wednesday, of the purported Liberal support, “That is false.”
The conversation between the young woman, who is in her mid-20s and politically active herself, and the purported group was on Instagram in the first week of July, in the form of direct messages; the account was a so-called “dummy” or fake.
The young woman, one of two women who spoke out last week anonymously to the Toronto Star, is a recent law school graduate.
Clement himself was the subject of a more recent shakedown — by those he identified as “foreign actors” seeking 50,000 euros for “the disclosure of intimate and personal information,” according to his letter last week to his Parry Sound Muskoka, Ont., constituents.
He immediately reported the second incident to the RCMP and handed over his cell phone for forensic examination.
This revelation had the 57-year-old Tory veteran give up his seat on a new national security committee and his position in the party’s shadow cabinet.
But when more information emerged — the day after the Star asked Clement about what the two anonymous women told the paper — he posted the letter to his constituents admitting to multiple “inappropriate exchanges” online, which “crossed lines that should never have been crossed” and which led “acts of infidelity.”
He was then asked to resign from the Conservative caucus by leader Andrew Scheer. He now sits as an Independent.
But last July, it was his former mistress who was allegedly targeted.
According to the screenshots the National Post has acquired, when offered the bribe, she replied, “I don’t want $$ directly I want an articling job.”
A source close to Clement confirms that the woman had asked Clement to help her find an articling position with a law firm after the two ended their sexual relationship.
The woman replied to Post emails by confirming she was the person quoted in the Star story, but said “I don’t think I have much else to say…” She didn’t reply to several notes sent to the same address that asked specific questions, particularly about her reaction to the proffered cash.
In the first direct message, the contact said “Were a group of women who have been harassed by him. Hes cheating on his wife. If u run into problems with him let us know.”
Clement, said the source, began hearing rumours last summer from female friends on Instagram that they had been contacted by the group looking to get compromising pictures of him. Someone forwarded him a website that was operative for only a couple of hours — it showed only two pictures, one of him kissing the young lawyer, another of him bare chested.
At that point, the source said, Clement immediately contacted the lawyer.
She admitted, the source said, to having “shared” the pictures with colleagues, one of whom she said had decided to create havoc for Clement.
She also said she’d been contacted by the women’s group and sent Clement screenshots of those contacts.
He told her he was calling the Ontario Provincial Police immediately. The OPP has confirmed that he did. The lawyer also told the Post she too called police, an officer she said was named Matt, but didn’t reply to questions about which force she phoned.
In any case, with the website so quickly taken down and the contact for the group of women apparently a fake, the investigation was at a dead end.
Clement did tell Conservative whip Mark Strahl last summer about a fake website that he said was reporting fraudulent things about him.
But Clement didn’t tell Strahl about his own online behaviour and his resulting vulnerability, so Strahl considered it just another instance of a troll harassing an MP. He told Clement how to report it, and didn’t take it further within the party.
The source said Clement’s interactions with women online and in real life typically began on Instagram with one following the other, then “liking” one another’s posted pictures, and moving to direct messages, which are private. Some eventually moved to WhatsApp, which has better security and encryption.
All of the relationships, said the source, were consensual, if inappropriate and risky for him, and none of the women who have come forward thus far have suggested otherwise.
CROSSED LINES THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CROSSED.