Jean Brault, Paul Coffin and Chuck Guité Have Cut a Deal with Prosecutors

The Toronto Free Press reports that Canadian Adscam and Gomery probe witnesses Jean Brault, Paul Coffin and Chuck Guité have cut a deal with prosecutors in the Paul Martin Government:

In a conference call with Liberal riding association executives Monday, Paul Martin’s Quebec lieutenant Jean Lapierre offered an insight into why Gomery probe witnesses Jean Brault, Paul Coffin and Chuck Guité have suddenly been blessed with astounding powers of total recall. According to several people, who dialed into the conference call, Lapierre confirmed that all three men have cut a deal with prosecutors.

The blurt attributed to the federal transport minister and Outremont MP is disturbing for a number of reasons, beginning with how he knows. Judge John Gomery’s judicial inquiry into misspending and corruption within the Public Works ministry’s advertising sponsorship program is supposed to be at arm’s length from both the federal government and the Liberal Party of Canada, so if in fact Lapierre said what he is alleged to have said, it signals that the deal is common knowledge within the Martin government and the party.

Far more disturbing is the impression that the Martin Liberals felt they could stage-manage Gomery. Brault, Guité and Coffin were charged with various counts of fraud and conspiracy prior to the probe getting underway.

Under the terms of Gomery’s mandate, nobody can be prosecuted on the basis of testimony delivered at the inquiry, so if the RCMP decides to proceed

against anyone named in testimony, they have to start afresh–and if anybody knows whether the Gomery lawyers will give up their evidence to further the RCMP’s probe, they’re not saying. But according to one of our sources, a Liberal fundraiser named in recent testimony, told us the Gomery commission’s lawyers are upset at the narrowness of their mandate. He’s under the impression that Gomery’s legalists now propose to stretch their investigation far beyond the mandate that Paul Martin and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler had originally envisioned.

Ever hear of a runaway judicial inquiry?

This week, while Coffin and Guité were testifying against the backdrop of an on-again, off-again publication ban, Gomery lawyers were interviewing next week’s witness, former Liberal Party of Canada Quebec director-general Benoît Corbeil. It was inevitable; Corbeil has already given interviews to both Montreal’s La Presse and the Globe and Mail in which he’s said people in Martin’s government and with Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals received cash from Brault. This is the closest Gomery has come to recognizing that those tagged by Brault’s free-form flow of unsubstantiated testimony deserve the right to defend themselves.

No wonder Martin gave Canadians that Beaten-Man performance, followed up by an unprecedented spending spree in Ontario…..

Read the rest here.

A few questions to ask Judge Gomery: