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“I think that’s particularly unfortunate. If I’d been here, if (former Harper chief of staff Ian) Brodie had been here, if others, even (another former chief of staff Guy) Giorno, others, no one would have advised him to take on the chief justice of Canada on anything, especially in a public way,” Carson said in an interview on CBC’s Power & Politics.

“I just think it was just, I don’t know if bad judgment is the right word, but my goodness, it’s certainly not a fight a prime minister should be picking.”

On the Senate expenses scandal, Carson said the prime minister is the kind of leader who would have wanted to know details about the $90,000 payment Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright made to Duffy, apparently secretly, to cover his improper Senate expense claims.

He said he believes Harper when the prime minister says he didn’t know about the payment. Carson said that had he been in the PMO during the Senate expenses scandal, the prime minister “absolutely” would have known about the payment.

Carson also said Harper has a temper and is prone to fits of anger. Asked if the prime minister would dress down people and swear at them, Carson said, “Oh yeah.”

“You couldn’t run a country or take the position that the prime minister has without emotional outbursts, without displaying temper. And certainly it was there,” he said.

Carson, a convicted fraudster, has been in the news because of his new book, 14 Days. He is also expected to be in court early next month for a pre-trial preliminary inquiry into charges of influence-peddling, which he intends to fight.