MSM Has Yet To Detect Stephen Harper's Slip Up In Question Period On Wednesday ...
".. during Wednesday's question period the Prime Minister let slip a statement that contradicts a point he has emphatically made in the past.
The issue was whether Nigel Wright "acted alone" on the notorious $90,000 gift, or whether other Conservative Party or government officials were involved.
The question came from NDP leader Tom Mulcair: "On June 5 and 6, when I asked the Prime Minister whether Ray Novak was involved in the Duffy affair, the Prime Minister said that Nigel Wright acted alone. Was that true?"
In his answer, Harper appeared to have misunderstood the question, although that may have been an intentional "misunderstanding."
Note carefully that Mulcair was not asking the Prime Minister whether or not Ray Novak was involved.
The Opposition Leader merely referred to Novak to give context to his more general question, which was: Was the Prime Minister speaking the truth, in June, when he said Nigel Wright acted alone?
"Mr. Wright has been absolutely clear in terms of who he told he intended to repay Mr. Duffy's expenses to," Harper replied.
In alluding to folks whom Wright "told" about the $90,000 Harper in effect admitted that he had been less than forthright in June. His statement on Wednesday was tantamount to admitting that Wright had not acted alone.
Harper tried to muddy the issue by throwing in the non sequitur that if "others" were, indeed, involved in the $90,000 caper, Ray Novak (currently the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff ) was not one of them:
"[Wright] did not say Ray Novak was one of those people. He has named those people..."
Now, let's pause for just one second here.
Either Wright "acted alone" or he acted in concert with other people, people whom Harper now says Wright has, in fact, "named."
What happened to Harper's earlier claim that Wright acted alone?
Can the Prime Minister's answer on Wednesday and the assertion he made in June (that Mulcair quoted on Wednesday) both be true?
That would defy logic.
But if truth is the first victim of war, it seems that logic is the first victim of the kind of desperate political gamesmanship Harper is engaged in these days."
He has retracted his earlier claim that no one in the PMO knew anything about the cheque but Wright. He had no choice. Wright said Perrin, Woodcock and van Hemmen knew about it.
What Harper has never explained was why he didn't know this when the scandal supposedly blew up in his face last Spring. You would have to believe he never asked his top aides whether they were involved. Either that or else they lied to their Fuhrer, in which case why is van Hemmen still in the PMO?
There's nothing to indicate Novak was a party to the Wright cheque business. He did, however, later call Duffy at his Cavendish cottage demanding his resignation in 90-minutes or else. Lebreton took part in that call,making the same demand. That one might just have been taped from Duffy's end.
Posted by
The Mound of Sound |
11:10 am, October 24, 2013