PREAMBLE

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During the last PC Leadership Campaign (2018-19), it became known to at least some of the candidates, that a number of unsavoury and preferential occurrences were happening with Denny King and his hard-core campaign team.

He had all the heavy-hitters on his team, key players from the backroom. Adam Ross quit his position with the PC Party to work full-time to get Denny the leadership; and Margaret Ann Walsh left her position on the PEI PC Party Executive to become his Campaign Manager, but not until AFTER she was done vetting his competitors, the other candidates, including me.

There was controversy from the get-go, with contender Shawn Driscoll raising concerns about Ross’s resignation.

Kerri Carpenter also sat on the Executive and participated in the candidate vetting[she also sat on the dispute resolution committee that had been set up for the Campaign], and had rented her building to Denny, which the rest of us complained about, so she too resigned. 

Carpenter would likely deny it, but she sure seemed “all in for Denny” to me at the time. 

Shawn Driscoll had contacted the rest of us with information about Carpenter’s dealings with Denny. We supported him in his bid to have her removed, on the strength of the facts he had uncovered, and we all signed a letter to that effect.

Shawn was unfortunately sitting in the front of the wagon behind the horse when the tail suddenly lifted, for instigating the action, and was immediately taken off the Christmas Card mailing list of every PC Backroomers from tip to tip to tip! Ouch.

Carpenter then resigned. But her building lived on in the saga, first as Denny’s headquarters during the PC Leadership race, then through the election Campaign, and apparently, Ms. Carpenter has since swung a sweet deal when Hon. Steven Myers was Minister of Transportation, and (I haven’t verified, but got the information from a very reliable source) has a lease on the building with the Department of Transportation until at least the second Coming. Bravo Kerri!

I could go on and on with the names and connections and supporters of King that I witnessed – names that show up now as “appointments” or people involved in deals, etc., but that’s enough context on a wider scale…time to get back to the very serious matter that is the meat and potatoes of this article. 

Suffice it to say that as the campaign progressed, the backroom emerged more and more from the shadows, and all those who said they were “neutral” and wanted to let the membership decide were frantically taking out ads in the newspapers, tweeting and doing photo-ops for Denny, even the MLAs like Stephen Myers and Sidney MacEwan who swore they weren’t endorsing any candidates…all of a sudden there was a full-court press from them all for Denny!

There were also rumours of a secret fund for Denny having been raised. I was told directly by someone who had first-hand knowledge, but to be honest, without any documented evidence, I wasn’t certain I wasn’t being set up to make some public claim that was false. At any rate, that’s not something I do, so because during the campaign I had no proof, I never mentioned or wrote about it, although I figured it was indeed true: that King had been the beneficiary of secret, mostly ‘cash’ funds, to support his campaign…funds that he did not declare as campaign donations.

Proof now seems to have come with the latest court filing by Maines in the lawsuit against Dennis King et. al.. In particular, in the form of information and documentation obtained by Private Investigator, Derrick Snowdy, which he swore to as factually true in a second Affidavit that I’ll get to in a minute, after just a bit of background on how Snowdy came to be the person both receiving, and then swearing to that critically-important information.

JR apparently met with Snowdy last August, and it was to Snowdy JR was going to provide – as a whistle-blower – the confidential documents (nearly 900) on the “Gamesys Proposal”.

There were a number of back-and-forth messages between Maines and JR concerning providing the documents to Snowdy in a Manila envelop via mail, to protect JR’s identity. Up until JR’s decision not to provide the documents he agreed to provide, JR’s identity as the “whistle-blower” was being protected by Maines in the legal filing. Snowdy’s first Affidavit, filed with the original Motion that is seeking an Order to preserve private emails of Defendants, referred to JR only as either the “whistle-blower,” or anonymously as “Smith”. 

The back-and-forth between Maines and JR regarding his release of documents to Snowdy happened in June-July, 2021. JR had secured a position with the ALC after 3 weeks on the “inside” with the Gamesys Proposal group, and had not signed any non-disclosure agreements or was not beholden to that group in any way apparently, and was now safe and secure with his new job at the Atlantic Lottery Commission and was talking strategy with Maines on being a whistle-blower:What ended up happening, apparently, was a 3-hour (plus) meeting at Maines house on August 11, 2021, with JR and Derrick Snowdy both present:

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MAINES’ STATEMENT OF CLAIM

vs.

KING’S STATEMENT OF DEFENCE

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This is what Maines claimed in his initial Statement of Claim issued on September 17, 2021as a Notice of Action, and was then filed in the PEI Supreme Court on October 18, 2021. This filing was asking the Court for a document preservation Order to protect the private emails of the Defendants from being destroyed:

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This is what Dennis King stated in his December 23, 2021 Statement of Defence – in response to Maines’ Statement of Claim –  concerning the particular allegation made by Maines in paragraph 46 of his Statement of Claim:

JANUARY 28, 2022 AFFIDAVIT

OF PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR DERRICK SNOWDY

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In Derrick Snowdy’s second Affidavit in this lawsuit by Maines, the one dated January 29 and  included in the new 1000+ page Motion Record filed in the PEI Supreme Court on January 31, 2022, Snowdy provides considerable detail regarding a number of different things JR told him, and also outlines what he then did with that information, following up on some of what he heard with further investigation.

One issue Snowdy appears to done considerable work on was what JR told him about Dennis King’s “confidential cash raise” for $15,000, which is, of course, completely against the spirit and letter of the law – something that I (and I can only assume the other leadership candidates) did not circumvent fraudulently with a “political team” behind us…. I (and I can only assume the other leadership candidates as well) filed all our donation receipts in support our our campaigns. We accepted an equal-playing field and stayed within our election limit of $25,000….it appears the PC backroom helped Denny add another $15 grand to that amount on the sly…but, as it turns out, it was a pretty sloppy sly, with breadcrumbs all leading to the same story.

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In paragraph 7 of his sworn Affidavit, Snowdy indicates that he did some further investigation from FOIPP documents I and others had obtained, as well as from witnesses:

He then lists a number of  issues he heard about from JR , one of which was Reynolds’ statement  that Dennis King had been “…paid to run for the leadership of the PEI PC Party”:

Snowdy dedicated 9 paragraphs of his Affidavit, paragraphs 20-28:

 Maines indicated in his Affidavit that it was Stewart McKelvey lawyer Murray Murphy who was doing the ‘asking’ for Denny, at least with him and his friends and/or CMT investors.

Snowdy, on the other hand, claims JR told him it was Nelson Hagerman who served as the clandestine capital fund manager.  I’ve done some further research and here’s what I found.

Following my own investigation, I’m convinced that although Murray Murphy and others undoubtedly did some ‘asking’, as Maines’ indicated was the case with him and others that he was aware of, it was indeed Nelson Hagerman who coordinated the campaign. 

That was what a number of people told me, including Martie Murphy.

I specifically asked Ms. Murphy if she thought he might talk with me if I called him and she wasn’t sure, saying that they were both on the Alzheimer’s board together and he has a sincere passion for that cause and likely wouldn’t want to do or say anything that might have a negative impact on his beloved charity. I found that interesting, and after our call, did some checking. Sure enough, they are on that volunteer board together.

Back in the mid-2000s, just at the end of the Pat Binns era, Hagerman threw his lot behind Harper and ended up getting his wife appointed Lieutenant-governor. But notice his credentials – all money-related, which makes sense, him being an accountant.  He’s been a PC Party “money man” for the feds as well as the PEI PC Party, so that it would have been him coordinating the off-the-book fundraiser for Dennis’ leadership bid makes perfect sense to me. I’ve personally had confirmation from 4 separate sources that it was indeed Nelson Hagerman.

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I had a lengthy telephone conversation with Ms. Martie Murphy, wife of Danny Murphy, owner of Tim Hortons, just a few days ago. I told her that I was making the cheque that she had given to Denny back in November, 2018 for his campaign, along with others, part of the next episode in my series, given the filing of that information, her name, and the cheque by Maines in the PEI Supreme Court case, which made that information and a copy of the cheque public information.

Ms. Murphy was very forthright with information, seemed to have no hesitation or anything to hide in answering my questions. It seemed to me that her claim that she had supported King with that $1,000 cheque because of the promises that he had made to clean up the corruption in government, especially the egaming and document destruction and cover-up were believable.

I had remembered that Ms. Murphy had been a public crusader for a cause that I shared a number of years ago, so I believed her intentions were not in the “quid-pro-quo” category, as I’m also sure is not necessarily the case for others!

The fact that Ms. Murphy wrote a cheque, and didn’t give cash, would also seem to exclude her from any ‘quid pro quo’ expectations.  I asked her if she had  received a charitable receipt and she said she had not, but honestly hadn’t given it any thought.  

I received information from Ms. Murphy concerning others who she believes also contributed to the off-the-books scheme.  I’ll not provide any of those names here, being hearsay from my perspective at this stage – I have no documentary evidence – but will be including those names as worthy of possible investigation, based on the sources, in a letter that I’ll be sending to PEI’s Chief Electoral Officer, Tim Garrity, in the next day or two formally requesting that he launch an investigation into this matter.

I had a conversation with Mr. Garrity about a week ago to get clarification on the law governing this situation.  He was very helpful. Unlike some provinces that have leadership campaigns embedded within their election acts, in PEI, all candidate donations are treated as PARTY donations, and must be filed as such by each candidate.

I gave Mr. Garrity a head’s up that I would be submitting a request for an investigation and that I’d be sending a letter once I had completed my own mini-investigation and published an article on the issue. Which I’ve now done.

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SUMMARY

Premier King is denying everything, including this issue, but his lie is already exposed on this very important matter.  The names I received from others who definitely would know all correspond – names of the people donating to the off-book Denny PC Leadership fund.  

Dennis King is the only one of the five candidates running for leadership of the PEI PC Party who was hand-picked by the backroom, and he doesn’t deny it. In fact, he bragged about it at the Annual Meeting of the NS PCs, where he was invited to be the keynote speaker some months after he became Premier and was giving advice to other Premiers and the PM on the merits of political collaboration.

Still riding high on the big win at the polls, and clearly ecstatic at becoming the Premier of a Canadian province, King explained how he was picked, prepped, then plucked of all the “stories,” and told what’s what with the deal that made him Premier – by HAVING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING from what he said, at the beck and call and will of the backroom….important to be able to ‘sell’ to the crowd, bit them to do what the “political team” wants done. Denny seemed fine with what should now be a defunct style of politics:

Normally, Denny’s political team would now be out hunting for a good deal on a bus to toss King under…but unfortunately, so many of the “political team”  have now themselves been identified, mostly by JR via Maines’ PEI Supreme Court lawsuit, and outed as themselves being tied to corruption in one form or another!

So, on a more Senatorial second sober thought”… they’re probably all just staying quiet, real quiet, mum as mum, hoping to somehow avoid notice, or the looming nightmare will just go away, which is unlikely to be a winning strategy, given Maines’ tenacity, the quality of the legal counsel he has behind him, and, of course, ALL THAT EVIDENCE! 

From what I understand…everyone is still waiting for JR to emerge from God knows where – or the Judge to say “time’s up!” JR, and act – so we can finally see what the next move will be and start getting some answers to a VERY long list of questions.  I personally can hardly wait, because I can’t imagine what those answers will be anymore, so I guess we’ll all just have to stay tuned.

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Below is the list of donors made to Dennis King’s PC Leadership Campaign for which receipts were issued, as prepared by the PEI Electoral Office. You’ll notice the cheque from Ms. Murphy is not included, nor are the contributions from the others allegedly raising that secret that I was told about who together raised the targeted amount of $15,000:

Donations Under $25.00: