Remember It's Not The Crime That'll Get You In The End...

RoboCallRevival

AllHangoutsOnDeckVille

....It's The Cover-Up.

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Update at the bottom of the post....

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Yesterday, we noted that the good Mr. John Ivison of the NaPo tried to go full-court deflector spin while he was on 'The House' with the CBC's Terry Milewski discussing the Pan-Canadian voter fraud matter.

And part of that deflector spin was Mr. Ivison's 'relevation' that he had Pierre Poutine's phone records which apparently show that the still-secret fellow with the cheese curds made of (scape)goat's milk robo-called a whole bunch of ridings in Ontario, not just Guelph.

You get what's going down here?

You see how this could be construed as an attempt to narrow the focus on one potential bad actor who was actually responsible for a whole bunch of 'regional' robocall-initiated voter fraud?

Anyway, I thought Mr. Milewski slammed down Mr. Ivison, hard, and stopped the spin cold when he made it clear that the heart of his real revelation (Testify!) last week was live, not robo-calls.

But there is something else that is very important to consider here, which The Sixth Estate picked up on.

Specifically....

Who, precisely, leaked those phone records to Mr. Ivison?

Well, it turns out that it was 'conservative partisans' (what the heckfire does that mean?), as noted after the fact by the Globe and Mail. What's more, the leak was highly selective (what, no more blast Talking Points that non-selective reporters were willing to wurlitzer, raw?):

....Conservative partisans tried on Friday to tamp down the notion that the problem was bigger than Guelph,releasing records of calls made by an unknown operative… These recods, provided to select journalists Friday, showed that thousands of calls were made....

Which is a nice try with a slightly expanded 'limited hangout' .

However, the Sixth Estate has since followed-up with an even more important set of points to consider:

These phone records, if they’re legit, are evidence of election fraud. The proper place for these records is in the hands of Elections Canada investigators. The fact that the Conservatives have them can only mean one of three things:

1. The Conservatives got the records directly from Racknine. I’m not sure how that squares with Racknine’s previous claims that they are a non-partisan organization and that the call order in question didn’t come from the Conservative Party (which would mean, presumably, that they shouldn’t be sharing the records with an unconnected third party).
2. The Conservatives got the records from Elections Canada. This would suggest either that the Conservatives have a mole on the investigation team, or that Elections Canada is under political control by the very party that it’s currently supposed to be investigating.
3. The Conservatives got the records internally. This would suggest they already know who the perpetrator is — and may have known all along.

What do you think....

Is there any chance that those carefully chosen 'select' members of the proMedia like, say, Mr. Ivison, will go back to those same 'conservative partisans' and nail them to the wall by asking them the real questions that would reveal which of points 1, 2, or 3 is correct?

Me, I'm not holding my breath.

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And if you're not checking in with The Sixth Estate regularly on this issue, you're crazy....Or an ostrich...Or just plain plumage....Maybe.

And one more thing...Have you noted the new meme....That if it wasn't a call wherein the caller, Robo or otherwise, identified him or herself as being from Elections Canada, it was not illegal....Again, it would appear that folks are trying to limit and circumscribe the hangout as much as possible to he or she who soon will be, we imagine, scapegoated...

Update: Please note that in the original late Saturday night version of this post I had indicated that Mr. Ivison said that it was Matt Meier of RackNine who had hunted down the Poutine phone records on the 'The House'...I went back and listened again, and I was not correct...What Mr. Ivison did say was that Mr. Mieier identified Mr. Poutine and traced his IP address to a private residence in Guelph....My apologies for getting that subtlety of the setting up of the potential scapegoat wrong initially....It of course doesn't rule out the possibility that it was also Rack-Nine who hunted down the records in at least some, if not all of the other Ontario ridings as well...If you missed it you can listen to The House here.

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