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Sen. Pamela Wallin told the Senate Wednesday that charges against her by the Senate were “baseless and premature and likely beyond the scope of this chamber.”

“You can’t concoct false charges on a whim,” she said, calling actions against her “backroom politics of a most odious kind.”

Wallin, Duffy and Sen. Patrick Brazeau all face the possibility of being suspended from the Senate without pay over their expense claims.

Even before either Harper or Wallin spoke Wednesday, the opposition weighed in.

“Stephen Harper is at the centre of this deep scandal, no one else,” said NDP leader Tom Mulcair after a meeting of his MPs in the morning.

“He is the one link to all of the people involved here. He is a control freak. Every word that is attributed to him by other people now sounds true when you know how Stephen Harper operates. This is a profound scandal that directly implicates Stephen Harper. This is no longer a question of Nigel Wright or Mike Duffy. This is about Stephen Harper.

He’s got to start telling the truth to the public. The public has the right to know. He says he’s answered the question… He’s never answered any of these questions truthfully.”

“The answers don’t all add up,” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau said. “The prime minister owes it to his office as prime minister to demonstrate a level of leadership that he has not demonstrated. That leadership means taking responsibility and that is something he simply has not done.”