Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
Once this starts to infect public sentiment into the PMO they'll turn the knife and go hard after him.
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I don't think that they will (if by "they" you meant the Prime Minister and his Office). The ability to do that ended today because the story is no longer a simple case of Duffy being caught having his fat-fingers in the public cookie jar.
The story is now that the PMO, Harper's chief of staff no less, is basically paying off Duffy's theft. Duffy won't even have to pay back any restitution to the public because Harper's guy is doing it for him... in effect he's getting away with stealing from the public. I'm sure that there's no documentation proving that Harper gave it (the $90,000.00 "gift") the thumbs up but it's inconceivable that he knew nothing.
Duffy may end up resigning but the Tories will not go after him hard since he can easily make this a very very very uncomfortable situation for them if they were to put the screws to him and he were to take umbridge at it.
I mean really... what other reason is there for them to pay the money back for him? Duffy makes $135,200.00 in salary for the senate job, by his own admission he owns multiple properties, and I'm pretty sure he made some nice coin during his TV career... even if he doesn't have the money to pay it back (which I doubt) it's not like he can't easily get a bank loan to pay back the money himself. Seems pretty likely to me that this was "keep your mouth shut and help us make this go away as quickly and quietly as possible" money. Obviously backfiring on them but that's what I think this was intended to be.