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OTTAWA — Aside from the who-knew-what-when in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office, a matter that has been richly explored and will continue to be pecked at for the rest of Mike Duffy’s criminal trial, there’s one other urgent question obsessing National Post readers, at least, and perhaps a good many others.

It’s this: Given the Prince Edward Island Senator’s professed impecuniousness back in 2013 — he told the prime minister’s then chief of staff, Nigel Wright, he didn’t have the money to repay $90,000 worth of expenses, even if he was inclined — how on earth is he paying for his very experienced, and thus very expensive, lawyer Don Bayne?

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And the answer is, Duffy almost certainly isn’t.

Bayne is unable to say because of solicitor-client privilege.

When I asked him about it earlier this week, he mentioned a May 2015 profile of him by Ottawa Citizen writer Chris Cobb, wherein Cobb wrote that Bayne has been working pro bono for accused terrorist Hassan Diab, a Canadian academic who was extradited to France and is now in a Paris prison awaiting trial.