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This is all good. Win,win... no matter how long it takes for Del Mastro to go under.
The longer he is out there twisting, the more damage it does.
This cannot stay in the news cycle as an investigation forever. What we are seeing is reporters using freedom of information to mine court documents that appear to have been accumulating for a while, so there as an ened to that. Which means the pace will not stay the same.
But as long as Del Mastro does not resign, this will keep coming back periodically.
[Mind you, looks like there is plenty of evidence to go ahead and charge him even if he resigns. So HE has no interest in resigning.]
Resign or not, and no matter how long until charges, its drawn out agony for people who richly deserve it.
CBC now has the handwritten memo and another example by Del Mastro's campaign manager, Richard McCarthy posted on their site.
Del Mastro says he's 'disappointed' that EC won't meet him off the record, very funny.
I do wonder if Del Mastro will try to sacrifice McCarthy for his career, he can rehire him later, or if the personal check is evidence enough of his willing participation in electoral fraud.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/06/15/pol-del-mastro-lawyer-l...
Oh, this is looking better and better. The Ottawa Citizen is now reporting on illegal donations to Del Mastro by employees at his cousin's business. They've got three people anonymously admitting they were paid $50 and the donation, to make a donation to Del Mastro:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Employees+linked+cousin+company+each+g...
Looks to me like the coup de grace.
And they've really cooked their goose with this one. Because the cousin is the one who will get all the legal heat for this one. And the only way to release him from serious harm is going to be for Del Mastro himself to cop some kind of plea for his campaign- meaning himself, the agent, and the cousin personaly.
Since it will be a long time before the main Del Mastro case on going around the spending limit and the big illegal personal donation could come to court- and there are many opportunities for delay by the defence... the Cons could play that game like they did with the 'In and Out'... counting on people forgetting and/or not caring by the time the end is reached. But even that much, this is different: the facts in this are more cut and dried, and with In and Out the Cons actually had some chance of winning the legal battles.
But even if the legal conclusions can be put off until people forget... you have to be able to at least battle to a draw on the immediate PR front. That is what the Conservatives did on the In and Out.... largely because it was hard/impossible for most people to understand the details of the alleged infractions.
I don't see any opportunity for the Cons to get a stalemated public opinion on this one. Attempts to portray Del Mastro as a victim have got no traction. Not a good sign.
It may still take a while, because there is no gain from the Cons rushing into this [and they can still hope for the lucky break of new evidence that confuses things]... but the way out for them would seem to be a combination of carrots and stick to get DM to resign. And still drag out the legal process as long as possible... so that the inevitable conviction/plea is old news.
Well, he's still there today, but even the sun is getting in on it. Though the globe is pretending its not happening.
from the sun:
“I therefore believe that Dean Del Mastro, candidate, wilfully exceeded the maximum election expense limit of $92,566.79 as permitted by section 40 of the (Elections Canada Act),” Elections Canada investigator Thomas Ritchie swore under oath in an affidavit filed in Ontario court in Ottawa on March 29.
There is a hidden but significant side benefit to this Del Mastro business.
One of the thing on the Cons agenda with the majority was doing away with spending limits. I pay attention, and I have not seen a single official spokesperson or MP do so much as float the idea. But the base has ascted like its a done deal since before they got their majority in the election. So I figured they weren't just fantasizing.
It was always going to take some PR work and some 'slow boil of the frog' treatment. It will be hard to pull off now that they've drawn attention to the whole question of spending limits.
IF Harper pushes Del Mastro off the plank, I don't think it is going to be right away.
Here's my prediction of the likely scenario. Even this story will drop off the front pages. When it has gone away for a while, Del Mastro makes his tearful resignation. The victim who continues to be hounded by Elections Canada... "I cannot do my job for my constituents. This will continue to be a distraction. I will be vindicated, but meanwhile...."
I do wonder if there is a plan at work at Elections Canada right now, or if they are working slowly and methodically and will only release material if they press charges and when they do. I suspect its the second, though I wonder if they would be holding on to a few investigations in order to come up with one large set of investigations and charges on separate issues. Del Mastro sounds like he is under two separate investigations, the one related to Hall's forwarded work with Holinshed and this separate one with his cousin David. Could Elections Canada be holding on to the results of this investigation, and possibly others, until the robocall report is also ready?
Though their work in the in and out scandal suggests that they will just work at their own pace and not seek publicity for their results.
How long Harper can hold on to Del Mastro seems to largely depend on how long he can keep it out of the papers. Right now its the post, citizen and cbc leading the investigation. Here in T.O. the star and the globe are mostly ignoring the issue altogether, surprisingly the star hasn't even really mentioned it at all. A quick google check on Del Mastro/news shows that its far from front page material right now, which might mean you are right, KenS.
And I wonder why there is any wondering. It just IS the second. Period.
[But there is a plan. There has to be a plan to do that. Its not either/or.]
Its like any prosecution- rush out there with guns blazing, and the potential accused gets off. [Plus that EC has a requirement to be perceived as fair and even handed. By comparison, most prosecutors and prosecutorial powers really only pay lip service to that.]
And the uncovering of the illegal donations by the cousin, that was done by the reporters.... safe guess because the attention the earlier story received got one of the phony donors calling Maher or MacGregor.
I think I know why you haven't seen much of this latest story yet: job cuts mean thin weekend staffing at newsrooms, with no CP wire service story yet for them to carry.
BTW, even though there is apparently no EC investigation yet of the cousin's donations scam- it will be pretty quick and striaghtforward work. More so than the DEl Mastro $21K personal check, the invoice and the cover-up docs.... which is itself tremendously more straightforward than the party's robocalls election fraud investigations.
One of the bogus donors has already sworn a statement, knowing that Elections Canada will be coming to him. So he's not too likely to change his mind about testifying.
But I wouldn't be surprised if EC gathers all the info and sticks that in their back pocket for the time being- bringing it out as leverage when the inevitable time comes for prosecution and defence to negotiate about what goes forward.
You can count on this going more into the background. But there is too much hard and straightforward evidence around Del Mastro for this to just go away. And with 3 years until the election, the Cons can't just wait this one out.
Sounds like a reasonable take on the issues, KenS.
I would assume that the donor with the statement no longer works for Del Mastro's cousin, or he would be worried for his job, since this could land his boss in jail. Likewise, it may be hard to get other statements, unless there is a way of doing it anonymously. Not my area of expertise.
But since this is also the same issue being opened up in Quebec, though we haven't heard much about it lately, I would wonder if this will lead to more investigations.
I wonder also how the next few months will play out.
Will Del Mastro resign?
Will Opitz have to submit to by-election? July court date, isn't it?
Will the Council of Canadians action succeed? June 25 to debate the conservative move.
The total of those would be 9 seats, not enough to take away the majority, but the public pressure should they lose their case to the Council (though I can imagine the court saying they should wait for official word from Elections Canada), the pressure could be a game changer.
Del Mastro and the discussion of his case brings me back to how babblers look at the election fraud cases.
Which can be summarised as "Come on now, when is Elections Canada going to take some seats away from the Conservatives. What is the hold up?"
There is this thing called process. I know people realize that. But a lot of times it seems to be just a pro forma acknowledgement. WE know what justice is, and we're waiting.
But there is also the question of practical effects. The notion the Conservatives could lose their majority over election fraud is just a fantasy. And not because the right always gets its way. Because no prosecution of anything ever results in the most gung ho proponents getting what they think is deserved. Even with really compelling evidence, you get a fraction of that.
If 3 Cons lose their seats over wrong doing [Del Mastro and 2 from misdirecting voters], that will be a big deal.
People here judge results by bodies swinging. [Or dissapearing down trap doors.] That would be sweet, and there are good prospects for some of that. Eventually. But the 'coin' that matters is the Cons credibility with swing voters... without getting most of them, they cannot win elections.
They are bleeding over all of this, and they can bleed substantially from now until 2015 without a single MP ever losing his seat or being forced to resign.
Fair enough.
But there is a high chance that Del Mastro will resign and a very high chance that Opitz will have to face re-election. I have no idea of the chances of the Council of Canadians actions, they have a reasonable case, but it would be a very serious result to call for 7 ridings to go up for re-election. We will get a sense of that in the next month or so.
And yes, its very very unlikely that anyone would lose a seat over the Elections Canada report on robocalls.
But these charges are much more serious then have ever been raised in Canada before, it could become a conservative watergate.
So I do agree that the chances of the conservatives losing their majority are almost nil, but its not impossible.
Depending on what Elections Canada can uncover, it could blow over or blow up.
A blow over would probably be the result if people weren't so unhappy with the Cons Draconian budget and abuse of power...the scandals and legality of all the Cons do are being exposed on a weekly basis with either one report after another showing what to the general public views as fraud , and what the cons and msm media look at as just normal govt operations ..Media/Govt hand in hand....
A blow up is the most likely outcome ...especially when you look at the fact they are investigating 200 ridings ...once it becomes known what riding's and who the second place finisher was and who should of been the real prime minister and what the cons did to interfere , and screw the Canadian people out of their right to vote and democracy ..that's it ..Blow up time!
New http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zky2bn0Gtyg New
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-QvXax88J8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0eQgUpkJ1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8LD5Q8ecc
Hey KenS, what is your take on the change of the head of the investigation at EC. Is it bad news, will the investigation now dwindle away or will it still have some teeth?
William Corbett, chief enforcer of Canada’s election laws, has resigned in the midst of a major investigation into misleading robo-calls during the last federal vote.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/election-law-enforcer-resigns-amid-robo-calls-investigation/article4361015/
As I've said before, based on past performence don't hold your breath for justice brought by Elections Canada--and now, surprise surprise, a former Harper deputy minister appointee is the new Commisioner of Elections Canada.
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/justice+department+bureaucrat+named+fe...
Sounds like Coté won't be involved in the investigation but may get final say in whether or not charges are pressed. It is possible he'll defer, maybe Del Mastro will give us a test case.
The Ottawa Citizen and the Post are still digging in the case. Now they've found affidavits that suggest that Del Mastro has been lying when saying he knew nothing of the case. Also sounds like not all of his fundraising team will stand by him, while McCarthy forged an invoice, McNutt is saying he knew nothing about the document but said the handwriting looked like McCarthys.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/documents+call+into+question+Mastro+cl...
KenS, you have better political insight then me.
I had been predicting that Del Mastro would resign or be resigned, but he's still there. Even as the pressure still mounts. Now McGregor and Maher have put out an article showing that Del Mastro lied when he said he knew nothing of any investigations, using more court documents. Yet he's still there.
This conservative party has no shame, but you were right, Harper won't force him to go unless maybe there is a court case.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/documents+call+into+question+Mastro+cl...
I dont know if I have better insight.
I've just been engaged with election financing for a long time. It's arcane stuff, so I don't have to play catch up now that it is in vogue.
What I have been saying is that Harper may find out it best to get Del Mastro out of sight. This going to court is pretty inevitable. There are limits to what these guys can "fix" or muddle into obscurity [they eventually lost the In and Out case, but who was paying any attention by then to the details that had always obscure and arcane]. There is nothing obscure about a $21,000, and stupid attempts to make it look like something else. [See the timeline the CBC did today. Its pretty damning- even with having all these facts out there already.]
If it is as bad as it looks- and there is ever less doubt- Harper isnt going to wait for a court case. That just makes the damage long and drawn out. They'll look for a trap door to drop Del Mastro down. When he inevitably agrees to some charges [but not for two or even more years], it will be old news as far as the Cons are concerned.
Of course, it is only a surmise that the Cons are unlikely to have something that will allow them to just sandbag on this forever. But again, a $21,000 check signed by Dean, with him not even trying to pretend he was reimbursed for it, that doesnt leave much for fixers to work with. And you'll notice he's not offering as excuses any of those reasons that he and the agent gave as accounts to Elections Canada. He's in enough hot water for falsifying documents, and its too transparent to be used even with a media and public where you can get away with a lot of stictched together lies and half truths.
Anyway, I may be wrong that Harper will at the best time for them push Del Mastro into resigning. And even if they push, Del Mastro has all the cards for standing his ground and refusing to go. I doubt they are going to do a Guergis to him.
But the fact it has not happened yet- 'he's still there' as you say- that means nothing about what to expect. They will stonewall and be shameless right up to the moment that DM tearfully resigns while protesting his innocence and his certainty he will be vindicated.
Ok, the Dean Del Mastro thing is getting very interesting now.
CBC just posted a timeline of the whole episode, and its very informative.
KenS, can Harper manage to keep Del Mastro with this out, or will he have him quietly fade away over the summer?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/06/19/pol-dean-del-mastro-tim...
More likely Harper will 're-assign' Del Mastro to some other duties in the up-coming cabinet shuffle.
There's one Senate vacancy from Ontario right now, with 2 more coming in January when Mahovlich and Di Nino have to retire when they reach age 75, so let's wait and see what reward for services rendered Del Mastro ends up with!
Del Mastro donors produce cheques that support reimbursement allegations
And Del Mastro hasn't resigned yet.
Will he taint the whole party?
Its sure looking like he's going to have to resign. But even if that's true, they Cons will be looking for the best time to do it. Anyone's guess when that would be. Again: doesnt matter how much new evidence comes to light, the fact he has at any given point not resigned, does not indicate he never is going to.
My thought was that the Cons would wait for this to go quiet for a while, before staging the tearful 'I am the victim here' resignation... to give at least some credibility [for the base at least, if no one else] to the appearance of him choosing to leave.
But with Maher and MacGregor and othe reporters continuing to dig up dirt- and I can think of some places I'd be looking that have not come up yet- it could be this relentless death by succesive cuts is just going to keep drawing out and deepen the agony. If the Cons have decided his resignation is inevitable, and the revelations and going back and forth over the existing evidence is going to destroy any damage control benefits possible from a 'voluntary' resignation.
I think you are probably right, KenS. I'd expect an announcement late on a friday before a long weekend, just after the cabinet shuffle.
And as an aside, is it possible to access election funding reports? How possible is it for a citizen to be able to search through and look for $1000 donations from the same company in other ridings?
Companies cant make donations. But once you have names, you can search them in the databases. People will alreay have done that- even though this has all the [amateurish] marks of just being within one campaign.
These bozos had the combination of criminal intent and stupidity and arrogance. They didn't have anything in place for spending over the limit while covering their tracks. And obvioulsy, Del Mastro felt he HAD to spend over the limit to make sure he won, but the national campaign didnt think they need that, or help. [He didnt win by much in 2006, but as an incumbent should have been able to get easily re-elected.]
This thing with the cousin shows that early in the campaign they knew that they were going to have trouble showing legal donations for the money Del Mastro wanted to spend. So they got the bright idea to manufacture some- involving even more people in the scams.
This is the idiot version tip of the iceberg for what goes on done in a way that an outsider can tell there is a scam running to exceed spending limits, but it would be next to impossible to prove. You'd have to do ten of these arduous and expensive investigations just on the hope that somehwere the official agent and campaign manager slipped up... and you would need multiple slip-ups to have a case.
In this case, the D Team was doing it themselves, and were so clueless that they made an enemy of a guy who had the goods on them.... and Hall even warned the official agent about that when Del Mastro was insisting he wasnt going to pay the guy for some post-election work.
A bit more reading on the matter and I see how easy it is to cheat the system.
$200 or less donations across the board....
The short of the matter is that Del Mastro just was too cocky/not smart enough. I expect that he's not the only con that fits that description. though its beyond my investigative time/abilities to check it.
It does have all the hallmarks of plain stupidy, but I'm not convinced its not widespread or possible to check up on.
Just for fun I went and checked Julian Fantino's finances (just because I don't trust him based on the foreign account allegations). Went to the EC site:
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/webpep/fin2/select_candidates.aspx
Looks like most of his donations came from a couple of fundraisers (lots of $200 and $400 donations on same dates) and only a handful of $1000 donations. I'm going to assume that if you're going to funnel money you'd use the max $1000 number. But most of his $1k donations are from families (and with different area codes, either adult siblings or could be using fudged area codes to hide the use of children - if there was cheating). But Fantino had lots of cash coming in, certainly compared to Del Mastro, so its highly unlikely he needed to cheat this way. If he cheated, it was more likely to be of the nature of the second account allegations, needing a place to hide extra money.
If I get time, I might search a fewer less popular con's and see if there is anything, but as you say, its probably been picked over and would take quite a bit of time and someone who was unhappy doing the boss a favour, like Del Mastro's cousin's guys who turned him in.
Interesting to check up on it, it is possible to check on who they used for robocalls this way (fantino - RMG and electright for $30k), but hard to see if there was donation cheating easily.
I think you've got the operative rule of thumb there: MOST of the Cons who dont just glide to re-election have plenty of support from the party, and/or are names like Fantino who just have to open their mouths and people they dont know and dont even see open their checkbooks.
Del Mastro was sort of a special case. One part paranoia about how vulnerable he was for getting re-elected [so the party didnt need him as needing help]. And not having the organizational savvy or personal cachet to get as much money as he thought he needed, without their help. [And apparently, too much hubris to know until too late that he was going to have a problem.]
The potential illegality is much more on the spending side, not the raising money side.
Pick any Con in a close or fairly close race- like the bulk of them in Ontario. Most of them spent the campaign limit. Then you go and look at their EDA [riding association] before the election. They are allowed to spend as much as they like then. Even if they really spent it before the writ drops, thats not the spirit of the rules. But you cant prosecute anyone over violating the spirit.
Then there is the huge grey area: spending recorded as during the pre-writ period and done by the EDA, but the goods and services paid for were actually used during the campaign. That was what Del Mastro planned to do with the $21,000. Except he was doubly inept. First, he doesnt decide he's going to park the expenses with the EDA until after the campaign starts. Not a good idea. But you can create the phony paper trail as they did, and it probably will not set off any alarms. But then Del Mastro compounded the problem by never raising enough money so the EDA could reimburse him for that $21,000 check [which they could have done after the election and it would look OK on paper]. That problem is what got the cousin out there with that stupid stunt of the $1,050 checks. And even doing that kind of stuff, they still never had enough real and phony donations to reimburse Del Mastro's big check.
Really risky to not report that $21,000 expenditure anywhere, because they didnt have legal sources of money to show for it. But they still probably could have got away with it. But Del Mastro goes and pisses off the guy who knows all along they are doing something fishy with the $21,000 they are paying him.
Well, duh.
But back to the point of yes, I'm sure there are a number of Cons [and at least one or two Libs- Holland who lost his seat to Alexander for one] who are hiding campaign work as pre-writ EDA expenses. But its not going to be easy to find for anyone. Because the same ones likely to have been doing that are also legally and actually spending money campaigning during the pre-writ period. Its very easy for the campaigners to blur that line.
That said, even if there is no one else as inept as the Del Mastro crew, I have no doubt that there are a number of cases where people were not very careful about the cover-up, or that the amount amount of money ia juat too much to build a fairly air tight phony paper trail.
The trick is finding it. I could point out a number of places where its likely to be found. But you cannot do any more than that. EDA filings are very sketchy, and there are no itemized transactions in the public record as we have for the campaigns. Only Elections Canada can get at those records, and even they have to ask for them, and keep pressing till they get what they require. They just do not have the resources for it.