The Conservative Party tried to pre-empt tomorrow's release of the search warrant used by the RCMP this past week on behalf of Elections Canada by holding some cozy chats with select news outlets.
Conservatives held secret meetings with select reporters Sunday to reveal details about why Elections Canada officers raided their Ottawa headquarters -- and to give their side of the story before court documents are released this week.
The party showed CTV News the court application for a search warrant, which confirmed that Elections Canada officials and RCMP were looking for evidence of an "alleged scheme" by Tories to spend more than allowed on election advertising.
The document alleges the Conservatives violated the Elections Act "by incurring election expenses that exceeded the election expense spending limit" by $1.1 million.
It also alleges that 67 Tory candidates "improperly" sought taxpayer-funded rebates on expenses they did not incur.
An Ontario judge ordered the application to be unsealed last Friday, but court officials had said they would be unable to make the document public until Monday at the earliest.
Conservatives obtained their own copy of the application and contacted a limited number of journalists to discuss the search warrant Sunday.
They scheduled briefings at an Ottawa hotel, but when word of the meetings leaked out to other media organizations, the party moved the briefings to another hotel next to their party headquarters.
Party officials then spoke about the search warrant for roughly 45 minutes, saying the party did nothing wrong and that they had followed all regulations in election spending, before showing reporters the court document.
Disclosure: I work for CTV.ca News.
CTV's Roger Smith told Newsnet that there's not much new in the application for the search warrant itself.
He said the "Tories wanted to get ahead of the spin on this thing."
When word leaked out about the select meetings, "the uninvited media tried to crash this thing, because they wanted their hands on this too," Smith said. "In the end, further briefings were cancelled and party officials hustled out the back door of the hotel, cameras recording their every move."