Senate scandal: The bagman cometh

By Alison@Creekside

Please welcome Senator Irving Gerstein, chief Con bagman and in-and-out election scheme perp, to Harper’s Parade of Perps with Perks for what the Mounties allege was his role in trying to kill off the Deloitte audit into the expenses of Mike Duffy.

At a Con Party meet earlier this month, Gerstein announced to the party faithful: “’First, I made it absolutely clear to Nigel Wright that the CFC [Conservative Fund Canada] would not pay for Senator Mike Duffy’s disputed expenses,’ the Ontario senator said.

“’And it never did.’”

Having the Con Fund pay off Duffy’s expenses had actually been the PMO plan all along; Nigel Wright paying them instead was merely a later variation on that plan when the amount was three times what they expected.

More serious is the attempt out of the PMO to muscle the Senate into shutting down the Deloitte audit using “back channels,” and to hide it from the public and the RCMP with the complicity of Senators Stewart Olsen, LeBreton, and Tkachuk, all of whom previously publicly stated they knew nothing about doing a deal with a number of PMO staffers to change an audit, whitewash their reports on it, and hide the Duffy money trail.

PMO staffer Patrick Rogers on March 8, from the RCMP ITO:

“Senator Gerstein has just called. He agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact agrees. The stage we’re at now is waiting for the senator’s contact to get the actual Deloitte auditor on the file to agree. The senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in.”

Harper has continued to deny that he knew anything at all about the actions of all these people he personally hired for the PMO or appointed to the Senate.

The RCMP ITO notes there is “no evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister was personally involved in the minutiae of those matters,” and Nigel Wright has also said Harper was unaware of the specific details.

So what. That’s what the six people in the PMO wrangling out those specific details were for.

The Perps with Perks Virtual Boxed Set . . . with perp bios . . . to be continued . . .