[BRIEF NOTE] More on the Mike Duffy affair

[rfmcdonald]

The above photo was given to Mike Duffy by Stephen Harper in 2009, congratulating the former senator on a job well done. This just underlines, as noted by CBC's Chris Hall among many others, the extent to which Stephen Harper was deeply implicated in Duffy's wrongdoings.

Harper won't be a witness at this trial. He's denied any role in the efforts inside his own office to get Duffy to repay the expenses.

But he will certainly face renewed questions about that. Wright, his former chief of staff, has told police he went to Harper in February 2013 to sign off on a deal, telling him at least this much: that they were forcing Duffy to repay money that he was legally entitled to claim.

For Harper, this wasn't a legal issue. It was a political problem. And, as Wright reported to his colleagues, the prime minister was "good to go" with the deal to fix it.

As we know now, the deal fell through, and Wright would eventually repay the money himself, a fact Harper says he didn't know until May 15, 2013 — even though Wright wrote to colleagues a day earlier that "the prime minister knows, in broad terms only, that I assisted Duffy" in making a repayment Wright believed Duffy might not actually owe under the Senate's rules.

Will this have an impact on the election? Time will tell.