The tweets sought to characterize the timeline of the defence's request for communications between the PMO, the Privy Council Office and Jody Wilson-Raybould

OTTAWA — The federal justice department has deleted tweets posted to its official Twitter account after complaints from lawyers representing Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

The tweets addressed Norman’s legal team’s request for communications about the criminal case against the former vice-chief of the defence staff sent and received by former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

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Norman is facing a charge of breach of trust for allegedly leaking cabinet information. His lawyers have issued subpoenas to seven government departments for thousands of documents they say are needed for his defence, and have repeatedly accused the government of dragging its feet in disclosing the documents.

The three deleted tweets, sent on Mar. 6, were directed at two reporters and sought to characterize the timeline of the defence’s request for communications about the Norman case between the Prime Minister’s Office, the Privy Council Office and Wilson-Raybould.

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Norman’s lawyers singled out Wilson-Raybould’s communications after the revelation of the SNC-Lavalin affair, which has seen her allege the Prime Minister’s Office inappropriately pressured her to intervene in a criminal prosecution.

We've made our position known in writing to the Department of Justice as to the propriety of that sort of behaviour

The tweets argued this constituted a new document request, and had not been included in the defence’s original application for third-party records filed in October. The tweets also said the government is “providing documents to the judge for her review at the pace directed by her, and will continue to do so.” They included a link to a fact sheet the justice department has posted online about the disclosure process.

However, in court on Mar. 6, Norman’s lawyer Marie Henein told the judge that in asking for Wilson-Raybould’s communications, the defence was only making it clear that their original records request should include it. “So, just so there’s no confusion, it had been requested back in October but we have sent a letter saying that this has to be part of the search provided to the DoJ,” Henein told the judge.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press/File

The department’s media officers had not responded last week to two requests for comment from the National Post asking why the tweets had been deleted and whether it was determined the information in them was wrong. On Monday, after publication of this story, the department sent a short statement. “Tweets were sent to two journalists as media relations outreach,” said spokesperson Ian McLeod. “We later removed the tweets, and are providing clarifications to media directly via e-mail.”

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On Monday in court, Henein told the judge that the defence had written to the justice department to complain about the messages.

“The Department of Justice has taken to tweeting what’s going on in court and issuing statements, public statements, throughout the course of this application which, I just want to put on the record, we take the position are inaccurate,” Henein said.

“We’ve made our position known in writing to the Department of Justice as to the propriety of that sort of behaviour … I can tell you we take issue with a number of the statements that they posted. I’m not really sure why we would be posting statements when the materials are available, and members of the press have been here and are following it quite closely and certainly are aware of the timelines.”

The Norman case was scheduled to begin a five-day hearing on March 25 to consider a pre-trial motion from the defence alleging abuse of process. However, that hearing has been pushed back due to delays in disclosure to the defence. As of Monday the justice department has provided 2,438 documents to the judge, but has yet to hand over an additional 6,000.

Justice department counsel told the judge on Monday that all of the “priority” documents requested by the defence have now been given to the judge. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey will determine which documents are relevant to the proceedings and whether any redactions are necessary before disclosing them to the defence.

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Those priority documents cover communications from top government staff including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, PMO Chief of Staff Katie Telford, former Principal Secretary Gerald Butts, former PMO Issues Manager Zita Astravas, and Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick.

The case is scheduled to be back in court on March 28 and 29, but the pre-trial motion is not likely to be heard until at least April. The trial is scheduled to begin in August and run for two months.

The three tweets posted and then deleted by the justice department

1/3 We wanted to clarify that the defense’s (sic) request for communications between the Prime Minister’s Office, Privy Council Office and the former Minister of Justice mentioned in court today is a new request not included in their October 2018 Third Party Records Application.

2/3 For your information, this fact sheet (https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/trans/norman.html) outlines the Third Party Records process in more detail. As the fact sheet points out, the Government is providing documents to the judge for her review at the pace directed by her, and will continue to do so.

3/3 It is the court who will provide relevant documents to defense (sic) counsel. On March 6, 2019, the Government provided a further 317 documents to the court for review, bringing the total submitted to 996.