Mystery lifts on role of Mike Duffy’s friend

There he was at last, the shadowy figure prosecutors say ran a slush fund filled with taxpayers’ money for Sen. Mike Duffy.

Gerald Donohue shuffled into view on a screen in Courtroom 33 at the Elgin Street courthouse Thursday, first seen as just a green-checked button-down shirt under a zip-up grey fleece. Then he sat down to testify over a choppy video link from his home in Carp, a round man with thin hair, squinting at his own screen through heavy glasses. At rest, his mouth hung open and his head nodded with a tremor.

Like Duffy, Donohue suffers from a heart condition and other undisclosed ailments, ones that have kept him from speaking to his old friend’s fraud and breach-of-trust trial. And even now, he can only answer questions for a couple of hours at a time, every other day.

The trial, in fits and starts since it began last April, has heard from Senate employees who arranged research and writing contracts for Donohue at Duffy’s behest.

It’s heard from people who received cheques from Donohue for assorted services — some of them research and writing, others, like photo finishing and makeup work and personal training, distinctly not. It even heard from Donohue’s son, Matthew, who ran the family company as a construction business and knew nothing about any Senate work his dad was using the company for. But Gerald Donohue, a friend of Duffy’s from his television days, has been a cipher — but no longer.

“We spent a considerable amount of time, primarily on the telephone, talking back and forth about numerous issues,” Donohue explained slowly over the choppy video connection. “What kind of issues?” Crown prosecutor Mark Holmes asked.

“He could call me up and ask me about leasing a vehicle, or, um, I just can’t recall all the issues. But anything he felt I had knowledge of, he would give me a call. I would usually have the information for him at the time.”

When Duffy became a senator, the chats continued, Donohue said. Only now with tens of thousands of dollars headed his way from Duffy’s office budget.

“What service or services did you perform for Sen. Duffy?” Holmes asked.

“Essentially anything that he asked me to do. If it was to do some research on a particular project — aging, why I’m a conservative, a whole range of ideas that he had that he wanted to get more information on,” Donohue said.

“Can you tell us about the whole range of ideas? Tell us about all of them if you can.”

Donohue thought for a bit. The aging of the population was one, he said. Donohue proposed that Duffy make a cause out of the price of gas, which the senator rejected. The “why I’m a conservative” question became a speech outlining Duffy’s political philosophy, ghostwritten by conservative writer L. Ian MacDonald. Other than that, he couldn’t think of any.

Donohue was a television technician who became a humanresources boss, with a Grade 10 education. What research did he do on aging, exactly?

“Go hunting on the Internet, mainly. That was my best source of information,” Donohue said. “Look up what was available, look up what the issues were facing seniors as they aged, what percentage of the population would be at certain points. As much detail as I could put together and pass it on to him.”

For this, Donohue — or rather his family company, variously known as Maple Ridge Media and Ottawa ICF, for “insulated concrete forms” when it was a construction business — was paid about $20,000. He eventually quit because the Senate insisted on sending him income-tax documents in spite of his repeated insistence that the work was actually being done by the company, for tax reasons.

(If he’s really a criminal mastermind feigning infirmity, he’s the smallest-time Keyser Soze ever.)

Another $45,000 or so, Donohue dispensed to people who Duffy’s defence lawyer, Donald Bayne, has suggested were subcontractors, providing essentially legitimate services for Duffy’s Senate work even if Duffy paid them in an unorthodox way.

For several of these, Senate officials have testified that there were legitimate means to get them contracts that Duffy simply chose not to use. The Crown alleges that in a few instances, he committed fraud by using Donohue to pay bills he knew the Senate would have rejected.

“The payments that you made … how did you know who to pay, Mr. Donohue?” Holmes asked.

“I would be instructed by Sen. Duffy,” he said.

“How would you know how much to pay?”

“I wouldn’t have a specific amount. There likely was, on occasion, depending on the individual, with Jiffy Photo I don’t think I ever knew the amounts. But the other individuals, where I would be signing the cheques, I would be told how much the cheques were

I just can’t recall all the issues. But anything he felt I had knowledge of, he would give me a call.

to be made payable for.”

Then Donohue’s testimony ended for the day. The link over his satellite Internet connection had become too unstable because of the afternoon rainstorm. He’s to return to the video link on Monday.