We didn’t really record this in a pub over pints.
I wanted bring subscribers into a conversation with Sam about the big story that has blown up in recent months, the story Sam and I had both been covering from different angles for years before this bombshell changed everything: Canadian intelligence warned PM Trudeau that China covertly funded 2019 election candidates: Sources.
I also wanted to set the record straight about Sam’s sudden departure from Global News. It wasn’t especially sudden at all. I explained the basics to paying subscribers a week ago in Team Trudeau and David Johnston's Whitewash, under the subhead About Sam.
Long story short: No, he wasn’t fired, and his leave-taking wasn’t about the lawsuit over his reporting about Han Dong, the Beijing puppet in the House of Commons by way of a notoriously monkeywrenched Liberal nomination race in Don Valley North. We had more important things to talk about anyway, and we spend some time talking about his new venture, The Bureau, which has been in the planning for more than a year.
The first instalment lays out what you could call an unredacted version of the 2019 report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. Both of us covered the report’s release at the time.
Sam’s new revelations in The Bureau derive from the 2019 report’s first draft, which of course the public wasn’t supposed to see: Secret NSICOP "Draft Final Report" concluded Ottawa values trade over security.
As for our conversation, Sam told me he wanted to give people listening to this podcast “the feel that they’re in that corner seat at the bar with us, having, whether it’s for me an Imperial Stout, barrel-aged in bourbon. . .”
I’ll be having a proper Guiness. Or a Smithwick’s.
“Exactly, That’s what I wanted to say. I want the readers there with us, having a natural conversation and staying out of trouble at the same time.”
