Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Stephen Harper's former lawyer comments on the Duffy case

OpEd by Robert Staley:
Commencing in mid-2013, I represented former prime minister Stephen Harper in connection with the RCMP’s investigation of Senator Duffy.  ... Now that Justice Vaillancourt has released his trial decision, it is possible to comment publicly on aspects of the case.

... Justice Vaillancourt ultimately concluded that the Crown had not proven its criminal case against Mr. Duffy to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. But that conclusion should not be read as a contest between Mr. Duffy and my client, in which Mr. Duffy prevailed. My client did not, and could not, ask that Mr. Duffy be charged criminally. Nor did my client assert that Mr. Duffy engaged in criminal wrongdoing. His assertion was, and is, that the behaviour exhibited by Mr. Duffy was unacceptable. It was and is my client’s view that public office demands a higher standard than conduct that falls short of criminality.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

the media is doing backflips trying to convince the unwashed that the Duffy acquittal was proof positive that Harper and the PMO were the real culpable participants in this fiasco.....it simply will not do to let the public in on the fact that Duffygate was a actually a huge liberal con job designed to discredit Harper and smooth the path for a liberal electoral victory,,,thus Mahmoud Harb was kept under wraps and his trial postponed until after the election and the evisceration of the Conservative leadership cabal was underway...

Anonymous said...

This whole circus was a useful tool for the Media to use against a PM they personally hated and wanted to destroy by any and all means possible, period! The Media are silent now, their collective "outrage" has passed as the mission to use the Duffy affair to smear the PM has been successful, the PM is gone, the imbecile actor has been inserted into the PMO. The Media will now return to not caring one bit what goes on in the Senate just like before the Duffy affair, although they will continue to use the Duffy case, no matter the outcome, to smear the former PM because thats what this whole sorry affair has been about right from the start, getting PM Harper.

Anonymous said...

old white guy says..........the left are trying to make being a conservative a crime. duffy was charged with a made up crime. I said from the get go that he had done nothing illegal and that those who approved any expenses were at fault if those expenses were outside any guidelines. who'd a thought there really were no guide lines. Harper also was not engaged in any criminal activity whatsoever. it is time conservatives stood up and hit back at these leftists a holes.

Anonymous said...

Just thought I would remind the chorus of "True Believers" of the fact that these media who supposedly "hate Harper" supported him editorially over 95% in the 2011 election and at a similar level before that. In fact only one newspaper endorsed the Liberals in 2011.

I know facts are troublesome things for the True Believers, but you might want to just consider the above and some of the additional facts that came out of the Duffy case, such as PMO counsel Ben Perrin (I guess another Harper hater, right?) who completely contradicted the PMO line during the trial, and said with 100% certainty that Harper's Chief of Staff Ray Novak absolutely knew the entire story and that Dear Leader was fully aware of same.

Martin said...

After months of trumpeting the guilt and corruption of Duffy by the media party, one would think they would be chagrined and silenced when he was exonerated on all charges.
But no, the liberal media immediately moved 180 degrees and claimed that the real culprit all along was the PM. They were aided by the off hand remarks of the presiding judge, who suggested these ideas.Lower court judges are inevitably encouraged to intervene politically in their decisions, at least with their remarks, not a good sign for an independent judiciary.
We have seen something similar in the Helen Guergis episode, where she was an arch fiend while a Cabinet Minister, but a victim and heroine to the media as soon as she was fired by PM Stephen Harper.

Anonymous said...

I always laugh when a leftist bum licker comes out of their hole long enough to say something utterly useless like Anon above (8:57). It matters not that leftist media outlets "endorse" voting for the Conservatives after Months and Years of slanderous accusations and false innuendo, it would be like Media whores constantly questioning the sanity of "Dear leader" Trudozo the clown and incessantly pointing out the criminal history of the Libranos only to then turn around in the last week of an election and endorse both the idiot leader and the criminal political party. Its the equivalent of beating the crap out of your wife and then turning around and saying I love you. Brain dead trolls do need some better talking points this one is old and tired. Try harder numbskull.

dmorris said...

Stephen Harper made an egregiously poor judgement in appointing Duffy to the Senate.Other PM's,such as Mulroney and Chretien had avoided the guy's entreaties for good reason.

The only "good" to come out of the case is it exposed the self-interested attitude of Senators in general,and their greed to get as much from the taxpayer as they could.

But the negatives far outweighed any positives,Harper F***ed up badly in this appointment,and has no one to blame but himself for providing the media with a club to beat him with for two long years.

Of course Duffy was exonerated, he committed no crimes but several breaches of ethics, his claim to be a resident of PEI is a fiction at best, and Harper should have realized this from the beginning and NOT appointed him to the Senate.

Harper disappointed me a lot when he turned to the famous and elite for his Senate appointments instead of appointing some decent Canadians from walks of life OUTSIDE the Ottawa/Toronto/Montreal celebrity club.

Hell,I personally sent Harper the names of two outstanding Canadians with excellent credentials and spotless personal records, and the PMO "thanked me for my input". Had Harper appointed these two good Canadians,instead of going with the elitists, he'd probably still be PM and the media would have had no ammunition to shoot him with every day for two long years.

I have backed Stephen Harper since I met him at a meeting when he was running for the leadership of the Reform Party,and voted for him, every election,as well as working at the local level on his campaigns.

But in the last two years of his mandate, he seemed to drift away from the goals we had in mind when we voted him Leader in 2006, and became liberal-lite, some say he was "Ottawashed".

I agree. So,in another circus for the masses,another politician was exonerated, but we are left with nothing to celebrate,only disgust at most of the hacks who serve in that Chamber,and politicians in general.

Anonymous said...

For DMorris:
With all due respect … Just for the sake of accuracy, I checked this website to see the so-called elitists who made it onto PM Harper’s list of senators. Apart from a few very obvious public figures, the rest of them come from varied backgrounds. Perhaps they’re well-known in their own communities, but they can hardly be labelled as members of the Canadian elite, IMO. Just because your two recommendations didn’t make it doesn’t mean Harper abandoned conservative principles.

I question critics (not talking about you, now, DMorris) who malign politicians' appointees as "partisan hacks/bagmen". In the same situation, who among us would choose someone whose POV is diametrically opposed to our own? Is it really that strange and surprising that candidates have more or less the same political POV? Whom would a Bob Fife, a Jennifer Ditchburn or other self-appointed sages appoint, given the opportunity? A conservative? A male-rights advocate? I very much doubt it. They too would appoint someone whose opinions are more or less in line with theirs.

However, does that mean that Harper was aware that Duffy and other senators would allegedly pad their expense accounts? My impression of Mr. Harper is that of an introvert who doesn't get involved in gossipy conversations, so he was probably not aware of Duffy's alleged padding of his expense account. Consequently, when the alleged expense account padding was exposed, he demanded it be paid back, as he did with the more expensive hotel accommodations chosen by then-minister Bev Oda. Yes, it may have been politically expedient to remove the embarrassment. What would other politicians have done, though? Ignore it? Defend the perpetrators? Feign outrage? Maybe it was the wrong decision but Mr. Harper decided to let the investigative & judicial process take place, with the possibility of a negative outcome for him -- IMO, a highly political decision from Judge Vaillancourt.

It is still beyond belief that a PM can be so maligned for insisting that taxpayers' money not be abused. Only in Canada, eh?

-- Gabby in QC

Anonymous said...

A column re: judge's decision on the Duffy case worth a read:
http://www.ottawasun.com/2016/04/21/common-sense-takes-a-beating-in-duffy-verdict
-- Gabby in QC