Harper approved plan to compel Duffy to repay expenses: PMO
OTTAWA (CP) — What exactly went down on Feb. 22, 2013, when the prime minister’s chief of staff approached him about how to deal with the Mike Duffy Senate expenses headache?
Two clear but very different versions of events have emerged:
A) Nigel Wright meets with Harper and conceals the details of an agreement with Duffy, but then tells other staff in the Prime Minister’s Office that the PM has approved the deal.
B) Harper was informed of and approved a deal, or parts of a deal, that could turn out to be criminal.
Duffy and Wright face police allegations of bribery, breach of trust and fraud in connection with the fateful agreement. No charges have yet been laid.
Stephen Harper’s spokesman Jason MacDonald spoke to a variety of media outlets on Sunday to lay out in detail Harper’s account, in the wake of a release of an RCMP affidavit on the affair.
MacDonald said when Wright and Harper met that day, Wright sought approval to “compel” a stubborn Duffy to repay his contested housing expenses — at that time estimated at only $32,000.
“You have a caucus member who is actively resisting paying, doesn’t believe he did anything wrong, doesn’t believe he should repay it,” MacDonald told The Canadian Press.
“So Nigel goes back to the prime minister and says, ’ We’re going to go back to him again and tell him he has to repay it, and he’s not going to like that, he’s going to resist it and he’s going to fight it,’ and we all know that even to this day he still doesn’t believe he did anything wrong or should have had to repay, and hasn’t.”
When asked how Wright proposed to “compel” Duffy to repay, whether there was some sort of ultimatum attached, MacDonald said it was just telling Duffy to repay. The opposition have ridiculed the suggestion that Harper’s permission was sought simply to have Duffy repay his own expenses.
Wright’s version, revealed in emails and interviews obtained by the RCMP in their ongoing investigation, suggests Wright went to Harper with a different, much more elaborate scenario that included covering Duffy’s expenses.
At the time, discussions were underway between the PMO and Duffy’s lawyer Janice Payne that would see the embattled senator repay his expenses and say so publicly, even though he felt he had nothing wrong. In exchange, the party would repay him for the outlay, Duffy would be spared any further questions about whether Ottawa or PEI was his primary residence, and he would be withdrawn from a Senate-commissioned audit.
At the time, Duffy was being scrutinized for claiming housing expenses for a secondary residence in Ottawa, even though that was where he mainly lived.
Wright wrote to PMO lawyer Benjamin Perrin and other staffers on Feb. 22 about the deal.
“Ben, please go back to Ms. Payne on these points and ascertain where they stand on everything else. I do want to speak to the PM before everything is considered,” Wright wrote to the PMO lawyer and other staffers on Feb. 22, messaging back an hour later: “We are good to go from the PM...”
Ultimately, when Duffy’s expense bill reached $90,000, an apparently exasperated Wright decided to cover the cost himself — something at least six other Conservatives were told about. Harper has insisted he was not in the loop about that either.