{"id":67382,"date":"2015-12-16T03:16:04","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T08:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=67382"},"modified":"2015-12-16T05:19:35","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T10:19:35","slug":"duffy-says-he-faced-threats-from-harpers-team-over-expenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/12\/16\/duffy-says-he-faced-threats-from-harpers-team-over-expenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Duffy says he faced threats from Harper\u2019s team over expenses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mike<\/a>
Mike Duffy (\u00a9 The Canadian Press\/Sean Kilpatrick)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2013 In Mike Duffy\u2019s telling, his last months inside the Conservative caucus were a devastating series of betrayals and threats, designed to force him into admitting he had botched his Senate expenses.<\/p>\n

If there was a crux to the senator\u2019s testimony, which entered its sixth day on Tuesday, his animated description of his dealings with Stephen Harper\u2019s team in February 2013 was it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew they were building a scaffold and everywhere I looked I saw people who were betraying me, leaking stuff to the media that wasn’t true,\u201d Duffy told the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was all alone…\u201d<\/p>\n

Duffy has pleaded not guilty to 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. Some of the charges have to do with his filing living expenses for time spent in his longtime home in the Ottawa area, on the premise his primary residence was a cottage in Prince Edward Island.<\/p>\n

Three bribery charges relate to the allegation that he participated in a scheme to have Harper\u2019s one-time chief of staff Nigel Wright secretly repay $90,000 in expenses, while Duffy told the public he had done so.<\/p>\n

Duffy\u2019s defence is that he was coerced into agreeing to the scheme by powerful Conservatives, including Wright and Harper, while all along he felt he had done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

Duffy said he made his case to the former prime minister after a February 2013 caucus meeting, arguing that telling the public he had made a mistake with his expenses would ruin his reputation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it seems unfair, I know you didn’t break the rules, but the rules are inexplicable to our base (of political support) and therefore you’re going to have to pay the money back,\u201d Duffy says Harper told him.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Duffy and Wright would have a testy phone call about how the senator should admit making a mistake and repay the expenses. Duffy dug in his heels \u2013 he felt he could prove he spent enough time on P.E.I., with other weeks spent on the road trying to raise support for the Conservative party.<\/p>\n

Duffy alleges that Wright warned him that a powerful, Conservative-dominated Senate committee was poised to issue a report saying he wasn\u2019t constitutionally eligible to sit in the Senate for P.E.I., because of his living arrangements.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that after everything that I had seen, everything that had been done to me, this seemed like a very live option, that they wouldn\u2019t hesitate to do this to me,\u201d said Duffy.<\/p>\n

When Duffy asked Wright to produce the analysis that said he had broken the rules, he said Wright became angry.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018if you keep defying the prime minister, you\u2019ll end up like Patrick Brazeau, out of the caucus and probably out of the Senate.\u2019 And I said, \u2018For what?\u2019\u201d Duffy recounted, referring to Brazeau\u2019s ouster a few weeks earlier following an assault charge.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Listen to me, you\u2019re defying the prime minister… you\u2019re going to do this.\u2019 It was quite snarky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wright testified in August that he had pressured Duffy to repay his expenses, but that he had not raised the threat of expulsion. On the contrary, Wright said he continually reassured Duffy that he was on a solid constitutional footing.<\/p>\n

Internal PMO emails filed as evidence in the court suggest that Harper did not want to entertain any discussion over the constitutional eligibility of senators to represent their provinces.<\/p>\n

Duffy said he received more calls from Conservatives pressuring him to give in. Those conversations, a new review of residency status partly triggered by Marjory LeBreton, then the Conservative Senate leader, plus the alleged threat to his constitutional eligibility, made Duffy cave.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was it. I had fought and I had fought and I had fought, and I tried every kind of resistance, but when they pulled that knife out and held it over my head, I felt I had no other choice,\u201d Duffy said.<\/p>\n

From there, negotiations began among Duffy\u2019s lawyer, Wright and Harper\u2019s lawyer. The Crown has alleged that Duffy made a number of demands around the repayment, including that he not be out of pocket for the expenses and that he be withdrawn from an independent audit by the firm Deloitte.<\/p>\n

Duffy told the court that he never asked for money.<\/p>\n

Instead, he said Wright told him the party would pay, because Duffy had spent so much time travelling and working on political events.<\/p>\n

Harper staffers then coached Duffy on a public statement on his intent to repay, which he delivered in television interviews that month.<\/p>\n

Wright ultimately wrote a cheque for $90,000 in late March 2013, after the Conservative party balked at footing the bill. Duffy said he still thought it had come from the party when the funds appeared in his account, not learning of Wright\u2019s role until it broke in the media in May of that year.<\/p>\n

As Bayne came to the end of his examination of Duffy \u2013 potentially the sole defence witness \u2013 he asked Duffy whether he voluntarily went along with the repayment scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I was coerced into going along with this under the threat of losing my job, and I did what they insisted I do, and read the script they wrote, and then found out in the fall that they’ve suspended my pay and pension for two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Crown is scheduled to begin its cross-examination on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2013 In Mike Duffy\u2019s telling, his last months inside the Conservative caucus were a devastating series of betrayals and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[9636],"class_list":["post-67382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-news-ca","category-news","tag-cp","mauthors-jennifer-ditchburn","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67382","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}