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DUFFY’S CLAIM: “On February 21, after all of the threats and intimidation, I reluctantly agreed to go along with this dirty scheme … Early on, in those discussions with the PMO, the PMO experts predicted the media would ask, ‘Where did you get the $90,000?’ When they heard that I had been using a line of credit to renovate my home in Cavendish, they jumped right on it. It was suggested I go to the RBC, borrow the cash to pay off that line of credit, and then, when the media asked, ‘Where did you get the money to pay the $90,000?,’ the PMO told me to say, ‘My wife and I took out a loan at the Royal Bank.’

UNCONFIRMED:There is no record of any discussion of a line of credit or a bank loan – either with Duffy, or amongst the PMO and Senate staffers involved in drafting his media statements and responses to questions, on or around Feb. 21 or at any other time. The sole reference comes in the Feb. 20 memo from Duffy to his lawyers, in which he says he told Wright that if Deloitte were to find against him, he’d “call (his) bank.”

The next time anyone brings up a possible loan is May 14, when Fife – who by that point had a copy of the memo – asked the PMO if Wright had co-signed a loan for Duffy.

DUFFY’S CLAIM: “Given all of those emails, you can imagine my shock when I heard there’s not a single document about all of this in the PMO, not one. In response to an access to information request, CBC was told there’s not one single document related to this matter in the PMO. Well, if they’re not in the PMO, they’re in the hands of my lawyers and I suspect in the hands of the RCMP.”



CONFIRMED: If there’s one thing that has been conclusively, definitively established throughout the course of the Duffy trial to date, it is the existence of a voluminous archive of emails from PMO officials, Senate staffers, lawyers and Duffy himself on how to deal with the expense controversy, all of which did, eventually, find its way onto the public record, both in evidence submitted by the Crown – and obtained by the RCMP—as well as the defence.