{"id":18770,"date":"2014-07-10T22:00:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=18770"},"modified":"2014-07-10T19:02:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T11:02:06","slug":"del-mastro-to-continue-testimony-at-his-election-overspending-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/07\/10\/del-mastro-to-continue-testimony-at-his-election-overspending-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Del Mastro to continue testimony at his election overspending trial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dean<\/a>
Dean Del Mastro. Photo from 24percentmajority.blogspot.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PETERBOROUGH, Ont.\u2014Former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro is to continue testifying in his own defence today at his election-overspending trial in Peterborough, Ont.<\/p>\n

Del Mastro\u2014who now sits as an Independent\u2014has pleaded not guilty to charges related to allegedly exceeding spending limits in his 2008 re-election campaign.<\/p>\n

The Crown alleges he paid Holinshed Research for its voter identification and get-out-the-vote calling services from a personal account, thereby exceeding a limit on personal contributions.<\/p>\n

But Del Mastro testified Wednesday that he never asked the data-consulting firm to conduct the voter ID calls that are at the core of the Election Act charges against him.<\/p>\n

Del Mastro\u2019s lawyer has already suggested that his client\u2019s personal payment to Holinshed\u2014a key part of Elections Canada\u2019s case\u2014was for riding mapping software, not voter ID call services.<\/p>\n

The defence will try to convince the court that because the money was spent on GeoVote software, it ought not to have counted against Del Mastro\u2019s campaign spending limit.<\/p>\n

And Del Mastro said GeoVote never ended up working for his campaign in 2008.<\/p>\n

The Crown has also alleged Del Mastro tried to cover up the alleged overspending by using backdated invoices to make it appear Holinshed had only charged a fraction of the overall cost during the election period.<\/p>\n

Del Mastro has pleaded not guilty to charges of overspending during the 2008 campaign, failing to report a personal contribution of $21,000 to his own campaign and knowingly submitting a falsified document.<\/p>\n

He left the Conservative caucus in September 2013 and has maintained his innocence throughout the trial, which is now in its third week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PETERBOROUGH, Ont.\u2014Former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro is to continue testifying in his own defence today at his election-overspending trial …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":18771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-headline","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}