OTTAWA—Embattled Senator Mike Duffy has amassed potentially explosive evidence alleging that the Prime Minister’s Office was deeply involved with the expense controversy that is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Duffy, fighting for his political life, is accusing the highest political office in Canada of orchestrating an elaborate scheme to pay off disallowed housing expense claims and making the broadcaster-turned-senator a scapegoat to appease disgruntled Conservative supporters.

An angry Donald Bayne, Duffy’s criminal lawyer, called a news conference on Parliament Hill on Monday to say the PMO had told Duffy he could claim living expenses even though he lived in Ottawa.

He also accused the PMO of leaving its fingerprints all over the “cover-up,” including efforts to write media lines for Duffy and, significantly, to shield him from the scrutiny of an independent audit in the Senate.

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“It’s the old story — the cover-up is always more damaging than the original issue,” Bayne told reporters.

“The PMO decided they wanted to sweep a political embarrassment to their Tory base under the rug, and they threatened Senator Duffy with wholly unconstitutional and illegal procedures of throwing him out of the Senate without a hearing if he failed to go along with it.”

And now Duffy is facing that very same kind of suspension from the Senate, even though he did go along with the PMO and its unsuccessful damage-control operations, said Bayne, a high-profile defence lawyer who has been working on Duffy’s case since May.

Bayne’s past clients include Hassan Diab, who was ordered extradited to face questioning in France in a terror case (but Bayne is appealing that order); Ontario Power Generation in the 2002 deaths of a mother and child killed when the company’s dam released a torrent of water and flooded a swimming hole near Calabogie. He also was the go-to lawyer for Mounties defending their actions during the Maher Arar inquiry.

If true, Duffy’s evidence flies in the face of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s denials of his office’s involvement in a saga that has carried huge political costs already for his government and Conservative party this year. Harper has said that his former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, acted alone when he repaid $90,000 of Duffy’s Senate expense claims earlier this year.

Wright, who resigned shortly after the news of that payment became public in May, has also reportedly handed over volumes of email correspondence to the RCMP, according to court documents.

Harper dodged questions in the Commons on Monday about these new allegations in the Duffy case, repeating only that Wright was “solely responsible” and that “we have given all information to those authorities who are looking into this matter.”

NDP’s ethics critic Charlie Angus said the prime minister and his party members have misled the House and misled Canadians in telling the Commons last June that Wright acted alone.

“I would love to see the prime minister stand up and call Mike Duffy a liar. But I haven’t seen the prime minister do that. I would think that if Mike Duffy and his lawyer are making this up, the prime minister’s credibility as a sitting prime minister would be to challenge him but they’re not, they’re trying to change the channel. (. . .) either the prime minister was involved, his office was involved or they weren’t. Which is it? Come clean.”

Holding a thick binder on Monday, Bayne read selected segments of emails that Duffy has already passed along to the RCMP, including a revealing one on Feb. 20 — two days before the former Conservative senator announced to the media that he had decided to pay back his questionable housing-claim expenses.

In this email, which Duffy sent to his lawyer and forwarded to a PMO official named Chris Woodcock in the issues management department, he says: “Nigel called tonight. He was expansive, saying we (the PMO) have been working on lines and a scenario for you that would cover all of your concerns, including cash for repayment.”

Duffy also says he has correspondence to show that the PMO was trying to make sure he wouldn’t have to co-operate with an audit being conducted by the Deloitte accounting firm. (In its subsequent report, Deloitte noted the lack of co-operation from Duffy.)

“It was being manipulated behind the scenes,” Bayne said. “He was being told what he could say and not say and what he should say to Deloitte. . . . The PMO was making arrangements that Deloitte would not even be involved.”

The Conservatives moved last week to suspend Duffy without pay for as long as two years, along with fellow former Conservative senators Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. On Tuesday, the Senate is due to hold a hearing on the proposed ouster — which Bayne calls a “sentence without a trial.”

Duffy last week served notice that an ongoing heart condition didn’t allow him to attend the Senate at the moment.

Bayne said this controversy has gone on too long without Duffy getting to have a fair hearing. “You’ve seen a little of Senator Duffy’s evidence and side of the story. It’s simply the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Bayne also noted several times in the hour-long press conference that Duffy was neither wealthy nor well — and that the proposed suspension could further deny him a chance to mount a proper defence, depriving him of not only his reputation but his livelihood.

“Quite frankly, the last year has taken a tremendous toll on him, physically,” Bayne said.

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NDP justice critic Françoise Boivin said this new development “indicates Mr. Duffy does not intend to go down alone.”

Liberal House leader Dominic Leblanc said it’s clear from the emails quoted that “Mr. Wright did not act alone.”

“The obvious person who should reveal them is the architect of the whole cover-up, Mr. Harper himself.”

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