Lawyers and Robocall Investigation – Part 2

Yesterday I spoke to Postmedia columnist Steve Maher about a Conservative Party lawyer involvement with various witness interviews.

As new details emerged today I sat down with Laura Stone of Global News for an interview.

Transcripts of the interviews obtained by Global indicate that the self identified Conservative Party lawyer was involved in directing portions of the interviews.  Although, in and of itself there may be no problem with this, the real issue remains that the lawyer was not the witnesses lawyer but the lawyer of an interested third party.

As I discussed yesterday this can result in conflicting ethical duties and risks contaminating the investigation.  This is especially true given that the Conservative Party may in one way or another be involved in this matter (the names of the witnesses are under a publication ban so it is imposible to know if they still work for the Party or if as Michael Sona suggests there were promotions offered for cooperation).

This potential problem is amplified if evidence obtained by Global is true.  Global News obtained an email sent by one of the witness.  The witness says: 

“Well I said I didn’t need a lawyer, wasn’t commenting. I don’t suppose the cpc (Conservative Party of Canada) lawyer counts, because my choice in that matter wasn’t exercised,”

If the witness did not want the lawyer present one may wonder why was the lawyer there.       

A highly unusual situation seems to have become all the more surreal.