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And it was crystal clear that this pressure campaign continued long after the former attorney general told the prime minister (and his officials) it was improper, and should stop.

Of course it should. Whether or not a prosecutor may take into account the economic impact of an international bribery conviction — the law would appear to say no — neither she nor the attorney general may be pressured by others to do so, and whatever other concerns the AG may or may not take into account in deciding whether to intervene, partisan interests are absolutely verboten.

It is gratifying that the ethics commissioner, who alone heard testimony from all of the officials involved — the Commons Justice committee having heard only those witnesses it pleased its Liberal majority to call — should have found the same, as it is admirable that he should have so decisively cut through the fog of irrelevancies with which the government and its defenders have attempted to obscure the issue: whether the former attorney general gave due weight to the numbers of jobs at stake, for example, or whether she was “difficult.” These arguments are, in Dion’s magisterial summation, “immaterial to the matter under examination.”

There is a strong whiff, rather, of abuse of power and, possibly, obstruction of justice

“It is not for Mr. Trudeau,” he writes, “or me, or for any other administrative body to judge whether the attorney general has properly or sufficiently considered the public interest in matters of criminal prosecution.” It is, in law, entirely a matter for her discretion, as it is for the prosecutors in her department. With regard to a particular prosecution, she is not to mess with their decisions, except in the most extraordinary circumstances, and her cabinet colleagues are not to mess with hers in any circumstances.