Harper’s spurned ex-chief still in touch with top PMO aide Novak

Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, told Bayne, on his fourth day of cross-examination, “I didn’t meddle with any audit”. I hold Mr. Duffy accountable for not having repaid his expenses, and Mr. Wright responsible for those expenses not having been repaid.

In the end, the party backed out when Duffy’s disputed expenses tab rang up at $90,000.

Lawyers for Wright and Duffy, bickered over what some e-mail exchanges meant after Duffy admitted he potentially made a mistake with living expenses.

“I don’t feel it was a lie, I felt it wasn’t on the list of things I needed to check with him”, Wright responded.

Duffy has pleaded not guilty to the 31 charges he faces, including fraud, bribery and breach of trust. He referred Monday to Wright as a “relatively self-interested witness” and said Harper’s staff acted as a “conspiratorial consort” to resolve the matter.

The Crown has made the case that it was Duffy who was an “equal partner” or “instigator” of a scheme that would allow him to tell everyone he had repaid the money when, in truth, he’d managed to get someone else to.

Wright said he simply wanted the Senate committee to change the terms of the Deloitte audit to remove Duffy, since he says Duffy’s repayment of expenses would render the study moot.

Bayne is continuing on a two-track courtroom strategy that has him simultaneously trying to paint Wright as a calculating backroom operator, and Duffy as someone railroaded by powerful men into actions he didn’t agree with.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who also attended Montreal’s Pride parade, sent an open letter to Harper to demand he explain himself over alleged contradictions and inconsistencies in his statements about the Duffy affair, and those of some of his cabinet ministers.

“I wanted him to try to put Deloitte together either with Mr. Tkachuk or LeBreton or the Senate administration”, Mr. Wright testified. Gerstein chair of the Conservative Fund soon after he took over the new Conservative Party in 2003. Sen.

Bayne ripped into the spectacle of Wright, an exempt political staffer working for Harper, trying to alter a confidential report from a private firm commissioned by a supposedly independent Senate. Gerstein to speak to his contacts at Deloitte-which is also the accounting firm of record for the Conservative Party-was to press the accountants into delivering on the PMO promise to Sen. At the time when this deal became public, you were in South America and you were saying, ‘I’m frustrated, I’m sorry, I’m angry about all this.’ Today, what is your message to Nigel Wright?

“I honestly didn’t think it was that significant a difference”, Wright said.

“I don’t believe in backroom deals or arrangements amongst leaders”, Trudeau said.

“It’s a way of showing that you respect rights and that you want to remove discrimination”, he said.

On Thursday, Harper supported Novak’s claim that he did not read a direct email on the subject from Wright – his boss at the time – and was unaware about Wright’s payment.