“Mr. Brown told me that it was permissible for me to work for a company as a consultant and then for that company to volunteer for the campaign,” said a statement released by Debbie Jodoin’s attorneys. “He connected me via text message to a third party for this purpose. I trusted him, but as time went on I became more involved with the deal and suspected it was not okay.” Jodoin says she began working as a regional organizer for Brown’s campaign in May at his request and has more than two decades of experience with the Conservative Party. Jodoin shared her concerns with the Conservative Party through her legal counsel, the statement said. On Tuesday, the Conservative Party Leadership Elections Organizing Committee (LEOC) barred Brown from the leadership race, citing “serious allegations of wrongdoing” related to funding rules. Brown has denied any suggestion of wrongdoing and said he was not given details of those allegations by the party before he was impeached.
A campaign is offered to compensate the company
In response to Jodoin’s statement, the Brown campaign stands by their claim that the leadership committee did not provide specific information about the allegation. But now the Brown campaign says it had identified Jodoin at the LEOC as the possible source of the allegation and claims the commission never responded. “Now the details are being released, long after the investigation and impeachment, in a clearly orchestrated effort,” Brown campaign spokesman Chisholm Pothier said in an email. “This party is a clown car,” Pothier wrote. A Brown campaign letter sent to the LEOC about Jodoin and obtained by the CBC says he had approached Brown asking for work on his campaign. The letter says Brown referred her to his friend for work, but that Brown assumed volunteer work for his campaign would not be done on company time. Brown’s campaign offered to reimburse the company that had paid Jodoin, according to the letter. Brown initially blamed his ouster from the race on Conservative Party establishment members and supporters of leadership candidate Pierre Poiliev, who he said tried to shut him out of the leadership race because they feared his progressive approach to conservatism.
