OTTAWA—Silent but smiling, Sen. Mike Duffy pushed past a throng of people as he left the Ottawa courthouse a free man after a judge swept aside 31 criminal charges and declared him not guilty on all counts.

However, the final act of the long-running political and legal drama had a hell of a plot twist.

Judge Charles Vaillancourt delivered what Duffy’s defence lawyer Don Bayne called a “resounding acquittal” and condemned instead the “ruthless” actions of Stephen Harper’s PMO aimed at ending a “political storm” over Duffy’s so-called inappropriate expenses.

The 308-page ruling, summarized by the judge over nearly four hours, was a ringing endorsement of Duffy’s credibility, and a scathing critique of Harper, his former chief of staff Nigel Wright, and other political aides who pressured and cajoled Duffy to help make the scandal go away.

“The political, covert, relentless, unfolding of events is mindboggling and shocking,” he wrote. “The precision and planning of the exercise would make any military commander proud. However, in the context of a democratic society, the plotting as revealed in the emails can only be described as unacceptable.”

It could breathe new life into ethics investigations by the independent Senate and Commons conflict of interest and ethics offices, suspended while the criminal trial unfolded.

The judge said Harper himself advised Duffy his primary residence would be P.E.I. upon appointment to the Senate. Duffy, he ruled, was a credible witness while the Crown failed utterly to challenge or disprove his evidence when it had the chance. It failed to call key witnesses to rebut Duffy, or to cross-examine him in detail. He said Duffy was innocent of criminal charges that he defrauded the Senate, breached the public trust in relation to living, travel and contracting expenses, or solicited and accepted a $90,000 “bribe” from Wright, Harper’s top aide, in exchange for silence.

The RCMP and prosecutors singled out the wrong person for criticism, the judge suggested. The Crown claimed Duffy’s actions were “driven by deceit, manipulations and carried out in a clandestine manner representing a serious and marked standard expected of a person in Senator Duffy’s position of trust.”

“I find that if one were to substitute the PMO, Nigel Wright and others for Senator Duffy . . . you would have a more accurate statement,” said Vaillancourt.

It was an astonishingly thorough trashing of the PMO, and Duffy’s lawyer said in 44 years he’d never seen the likes of it.

It brought to an end a saga that began in late 2012 as news stories about Duffy’s and other senators’ expenses cast a harsh spotlight on the senate. When Wright’s payment to Duffy was exposed, he resigned, and Duffy was tossed from the Conservative caucus. The RCMP investigation, which cost about $1 million according to the force, laid bare the inner workings of the Harper PMO and Senate, and the ensuing trial tainted the former government’s bid for re-election.

But the judge said none of it ever rose to the level of criminal conduct on Duffy’s part. He may have made administrative errors, or found “unorthodox” ways to pay for a fitness consultant to advise him on seniors’ health, for makeup services, or services like speechwriting or photo framing, but overall, Vaillancourt concluded Senate rules allowed payment for most of his activities. That included Duffy’s travel to partisan events, or trips where Duffy combined Senate business with personal, family visits.

The former broadcaster, seated next to his wife Heather, at first appeared stunned by the sweeping acquittal after the judge adjourned. He finally embraced his lawyer, family and friends.

“This is overwhelmingly rewarding” for Duffy and his legal team, said Jim Warren, a friend since 1971 who accompanied Duffy to court through the 62-day trial.

Duffy was immediately reinstated with full Senate privileges, but Warren said “it’ll be interesting to see what kind of reception he gets” when he returns.

“A lot of those people were pretty tough on him and thought he was tainting the organization. It turns out he may well have been responsible for cleaning up the organization and a lot of improvements that have to take place.”

Bayne told reporters the ruling sent a message “the Senate has to create clear rules, educate senators on what they can and can’t do in the public interest.”

“I’m sure all of you, like me, could make a good argument that some of the things that senators are allowed to travel across the country for at business-class expense may or may not pass a value-for-money test,” he told reporters outside court. “There has to be that kind of assessment on Parliament Hill of expenditure of public money. Those kind of rules did not exist in Mike Duffy’s day.”

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The judge said reading the PMO email traffic about the Duffy affair and the damage control strategy was like “peering through the looking glass.”

“Was Nigel Wright actually ordering senior members of the Senate around as if they were mere pawns on a chessboard? Were those same senior members of the Senate meekly acquiescing to Mr. Wright’s orders? Were those same senior members of the Senate robotically marching forth to recite their provided scripted lines? Did Nigel Wright really direct a senator to approach a senior member of an accounting firm that was conducting an independent audit of the Senate with the intention to either get a peek at the report or part of the report prior to its release to the appropriate Senate authorities or to influence that report in anyway?”

“Does the reading of these emails give the impression that Senator Duffy was going to do as he was told or face the consequences? The answers . . . are YES; YES; YES; YES; YES; and YES!!!!!”

Senate Expenses Timeline

Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch, an ethics watchdog group trying to mount a private prosecution of Wright, called on the Crown to charge Wright “because essentially the judge said that they prosecuted the wrong person for the $90,000 . . . the corruption and the deceit for the payment was on the PMO side.”

Harper still sits as an MP for Calgary Heritage. A request for comment to his spokesman went unanswered.

Harper’s former attorney general and justice minister, Rob Nicholson, was “surprised” by the ruling and didn’t accept the judge’s criticism of the former government’s role or the suggestion that politics drove it all. “I don’t buy that. I mean this is something that was investigated, the Crown laid the charges here, it wasn’t the government (that) lays the charges, it’s the Crown and so it was up to the Crown to prove it. Clearly they didn’t.”

Marjory LeBreton, former government leader in the Senate, claimed she was in the dark about the tactics employed by the Prime Minister’s Office condemned by Vaillancourt in his judgment. She told CBC’s Power and Politics the actions of a “few individuals” in the PMO were to blame, adding it would be unfair to assume the “whole” office was consumed with the issue.

The judge said Duffy followed advice not just of Harper but of senior Senate officials when he signed forms saying his primary residence was P.E.I., not Ottawa, a declaration that entitled him to travel expenses and per diems that the court ruled were in order. Duffy never “padded his pockets,” or inflated the expense claims. He said Duffy did incur travel costs and “reasonably believed” he was within the rules.

There was no “badge of fraud,” said Vaillancourt.

The judge said Duffy may have made administrative errors in finding “unorthodox” ways to pay for makeup services, extra cellphones, or fitness training that Duffy claimed as consulting on seniors’ health issues. He observed the Senate’s procurement policy has changed for the better, but he added it wasn’t the court’s role to oversee Senate spending or get involved in the political debate over Senate reform.

Recap

More on thestar.com:

Mike Duffy cleared, but Harper PMO feels judge’s lash: Editorial

Duffy is clear, but condemnation of Harper PMO is there for posterity: Tim Harper

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