The Star’s view: A harsh verdict — on the Tories,

By the end of Sen. Mike Duffy’s spectacular trial it was former prime minister Stephen Harper’s manipulative Conservative government, not Duffy, that felt the sting of a judge’s contempt. And rightly so.

Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt spared no scorn for the sordid machinations of the defunct Harper government and its “mind-boggling” bullying and deviousness on Thursday as he cleared Duffy of all 31criminal charges in relation to defrauding the Senate, breaching the public trust and taking a bribe to repay expenses in exchange for his silence, in a sweeping vindication of Duffy’s claims of innocence.

Put simply, “there was no badge of fraud” in any of Duffy’s actions, the judge found. As the Star’s Tonda MacCharles reports, Duffy “reasonably believed” he was playing by the rules when he claimed a cottage on Prince Edward Island as his principal residence and submitted his expenses. Duffy sought out proper advice from Harper and others, and never “padded his pockets,” pumped up his expense claims or tried to deceive.

Yet even so, staff in the Prime Minister’s Office mounted a “shocking” and “ruthless” effort to make the political scandal over Duffy’s fitness to be a senator for P.E.I. and his spending controversies go away, once embarrassing questions began to surface. That damage-control effort, which Vaillancourt likened to “ordering senior members of the Senate around as if they were mere pawns on a chess board,” is “unacceptable” in a democracy, he said.

Certainly, it disgusted Canadians and helped to seal the Conservatives’ fate in the federal election.

For many, Duffy’s claim that his cottage in P.E.I. was his principal home, his acceptance of $90,000 from Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to repay disputed expenses, and the expenses themselves never really passed the political sniff test.

But Vaillancourt found no hint of criminal wrongdoing. He put a high value on Duffy’s credibility and honesty on the stand; took note of the advice Duffy sought from Harper’s staff and the Senate as to whether he was entitled to his entitlements; and referenced the Senate’s notoriously loose rules. Vaillancourt also noted the “unbelievable” pressure the PMO put on Duffy via a “steady stream of threats” to acquiesce to an “officially induced error” in accepting Wright’s cash.

The scheme, Vaillancourt said, “was not for the benefit of Sen. Duffy but rather, it was for the benefit of the government and the PMO. This was damage control at its finest.”

As the Star wrote at the time, while Harper maintained he knew nothing about Wright’s payment, the prime minister’s staff were all “good to go” with a shabby scheme to shield Duffy and the government from more embarrassment, to mislead the public into thinking that Duffy had willingly repaid disputed expenses and to tamp down rising public anger over Senate spending abuses.

The PMO, if not the PM, conspired to keep the public in the dark about a secret payoff to a senator who they felt — wrongly — was abusing taxpayers’ money. At one point, the Conservative party was prepared to use its own funds to grease this sleazy deceit.

In stooping so low, the Conservatives betrayed the public trust and debased their brand. They could not find their way to doing the right thing by letting Duffy make his case that his expense claims were legitimate, as they indeed were, and being square with the public. Instead, they resorted to subterfuge.

Duffy’s personal vindication in this sordid affair leaves wreckage in its wake. This political fiasco helped ruin the Conservatives’ re-election prospects, stained Harper’s legacy, tarnished the party’s image and humiliated and diminished the Senate itself. The damage hasn’t yet been fully tallied.

The Conservatives betrayed the public trust. They failed to do the right thing by letting Duffy make his case that his expense claims were legitimate