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If Brown just misspoke, he could take it back, Siegel wrote. But if he’s sticking with it, why that aggravates the situation. Stand by for papers.

We’ve been down this road. Before the 2014 election, Wynne sued Tim Hudak and Ottawa MPP Lisa MacLeod for $2 million for proposing in public that she “oversaw and possibly ordered the criminal destruction of documents” related to the government decision to cancel a pair of controversial gas-fire power plants near Toronto. The then-leader of the Progressive Conservatives and his lieutenant ended up settling the suit just after the election, with a joint statement saying that yes maybe things had indeed gotten a bit out of hand.

The two Tories didn’t have a nanogram of evidence that Wynne had had anything to do with the alleged destruction of documents, for which police have charged Dalton McGuinty’s last chief of staff, David Livingston, and Livingston’s deputy, Laura Miller. McGuinty was still premier at the time and the police have never claimed that he knew, let alone that Wynne did, let alone that either of them ordered anything. (Livingston and Miller, whose trial is also on now, have pleaded not guilty to mischief and breach of trust.)

The not-quite-an-apology wasn’t the point, though. The point was to emphasize that Wynne herself wasn’t in any legal jeopardy before the notion that she was became part of common political discussion. Hudak and MacLeod were more careful after they were served, so the lawsuit did what it was supposed to do.

So has this one. Anyone talking about the case publicly now has to be careful to distinguish Wynne’s role in the case from those of her political friends. Brown can’t talk about her as if she’s formally accused of something without risking a whole lot of trauma.

Just the way Hudak and MacLeod did, Brown’s taken a killer hand and overplayed it.

dreevely@postmedia.com

twitter.com/davidreevely