The Senate scandal doesn’t go away. Instead it moves inexorably closer to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

It is now pointed at the heart of the Conservative Party.

We already knew that Nigel Wright, Harper’s former chief of staff, gave Sen. Mike Duffy $90,172 to repay dubious housing expenses.

Now, courtesy of court documents filed by the RCMP and released Thursday, we know this was more than an act of misguided charity.

We had been told initially that Wright demanded nothing from Duffy in return for the $90,172 cheque. We now know that this wasn’t exactly accurate. Wright, according to the Mounties, told Duffy that if he wanted the money he had to keep his mouth shut.

We don’t know, however, what the Prince Edward Island senator was to keep his mouth shut about.

Prior to this week, the story from the Prime Minister’s Office was that Wright had acted completely on his own.

We know now this isn’t quite true. At least four other people, including three in Harper’s office, knew of the payment.

However, none of them, the Mounties were told, alerted the prime minister.

Prior to this week, the Conservative Party insisted that it had nothing to do with the cheque to Duffy.

We now know that this, too, isn’t the whole story. Lawyers interviewed by the RCMP said the Conservatives were initially prepared to cover the amount that Duffy claimed improperly from the Senate. But at the last minute the party balked.

The reason given to the police is that, while the Conservatives were willing to quietly pay $32,000 to one of their high-profile senators caught making inappropriate expense-account claims, they were not willing to cough up more than $90,000.

To put it another way, the principle wasn’t at issue. The amount was.

The new documents show Wright placed two conditions on the cheque he wrote to Duffy on March 25.

The first was that Duffy use the money to repay the Senate (which he did). The second was that he stop talking to the media.

What was Duffy not to talk to the media about? What, if anything, did he know that Wright didn’t want him to say?

We don’t know the answers to those questions. We do know that Duffy did continue to talk to the media.

In particular, CTV quoted him as claiming on May 14 that he secured the $90,172 from a bank loan and not from Wright — a claim which was untrue.

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Before this week, some had speculated that the $90,172 payment was part of an arrangement aimed at limiting political damage to Harper and the Conservative Party.

The theory here is that Duffy would quietly repay the money he improperly claimed. In return, his fellow Conservatives, who hold a majority in the Senate, would whitewash his actions (which, initially, they did).

This is still a theory unproven in court. But we now know that Cpl. Greg Horton, the RCMP officer looking into the case, holds a similar opinion. This, he wrote in documents filed with an Ottawa court, is why he believes Duffy’s acceptance of the $90,172 cheque violates Section 121 of the Criminal Code.

That section makes it illegal for a public official to accept a benefit in exchange for co-operation or influence.

What the RCMP officer didn’t mention, at least in the documents made public so far, is that it is also illegal under Section 121 for anyone to offer such a benefit to a public official.

Which means that Wright, as well as anyone else involved in making the payment, may also be criminally liable.

Finally, in a seemingly unrelated development, we know that Marjory LeBreton, the government leader in the Senate, has resigned from cabinet and Harper doesn’t plan to replace her.

An anonymous government official told reporters that Harper hopes to distance himself from a Senate that has become an embarrassment. And perhaps this explanation is true.

But LeBreton is a shrewd political survivor who, while intensely loyal to the Conservative Party, has in the past been quietly but harshly critical of the man now its leader.

Perhaps, as this scandal accelerates, she is trying to distance herself from Harper.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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