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When asked how this could happen, Mullen said part of it has to do with the power structure at the legislature, where traditionally the clerk, Speaker and sergeant-in-arms control everything — including whether police are allowed into the building and what officers are allowed to see.

“The legislature is essentially the Vatican,” he said, adding employees have jokingly referred to the Speaker, clerk and sergeant-at-arms as the Holy Trinity. “Essentially, they can do whatever they want.”

The Speaker’s role in this holy trinity has changed under Plecas, Mullen insisted, because Plecas, unlike his recent predecessors, is not a member of the governing party. In this NDP minority government, which is propped up by the Greens, the NDP had no spare MLAs to appoint to the post, and when Plecas, a Liberal, agreed to take the post, he was expelled from the party.

LISTEN: Mike Smyth and Rob Shaw take a deeper look at the fallout of the Speaker Darryl Plecas report, the political maneuvering by the parties, Plecas’s first public comments to reporters and the troubled history of expenses that implicates MLAs of all parties.

Still, it was challenging to conduct this year-long investigation without raising the suspicions of the clerk and the sergeant-at-arms, “and ensuring you are not being caught by folks you are investigating because they would shut it down in a heartbeat,” he said.

Mullen denied this has been a self-serving exercise for him or the Speaker, noting that before the release of this week’s report they had been demonized over the suspension of the long-serving clerk and sergeant-at-arms.

“We have taken the proverbial kicking for two months straight, dragged through the mud.”

Photo by Dirk Meissner / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Plecas and Mullen were heavily criticized for the spectacle of James and Lenz being escorted out of the legislature on Nov. 20 by armed police in front of media cameras, which was dubbed a “perp walk.” But Mullen defended their actions that day, saying the two permanently appointed officers of the legislature could not be placed on leave without a vote from the legislative assembly, and once that happened, they were offered an option to leave the building quietly.

“Both Mr. Lenz and Mr. James were offered (the opportunity) to go out a side door, go out a back door,” Mullen said. “They said, ‘We will go down the very public speaker’s corridor.’ That was their choice. We were not interested in any way, shape or form in a public shaming, or ridiculing, or a perp walk.”

Nonetheless, Plecas and Mullen became the target of people who thought they had treated James and Lenz too harshly.

“We have received some threats since Nov. 20. The police are aware of them. They are usually from an anonymous source. They can’t really be tracked or traced,” Mullen said.

lculbert@postmedia.com

Twitter: @loriculbert