So who did the dirty on Megan Leslie?
Keith Torrie claims it wasn’t him but, beyond that, he ain’t talking. And he certainly isn’t answering questions.
On Monday, someone identifying herself as Jess MacDonald and claiming to be a disgruntled New Democrat created a Facebook group called “We Made the WRONG Choice: the RADICAL Megan Leslie,” and also posted two YouTube videos to try to discredit the choice of the NDP’s Halifax federal candidate.
The posts were quickly removed but not before a young Liberal blogger named Keith Torrie had tipped off reporters to their existence.
How did he know how to find them?
Good question.
The NDP says it has no record of any party member named Jess MacDonald and Alexis MacDonald, Leslie’s nomination rival, says she knows of no supporter of hers—the Facebook page creator's claim—by that name.
Which leads us back to Keith Torrie.
The 22-year-old Dalhousie student, who was president of the Nova Scotia Young Liberals in 2006 and an active Michael Ignatieff supporter during that party’s leadership race, emailed reporters to inform them about the site and claimed Leslie “appears to have some problems with her organization.”
Torrie insists he didn’t have anything to do with creating or posting the material. “From what I’ve seen,” he told allnovascotia.com, “it’s an internal NDP thing.”
But he isn’t saying anything beyond that. When I emailed him to arrange an interview, he emailed back: “I have no further comment other than to say that I had nothing to do with the constructing or posting on facebook and youtube of any material related to media stories regarding infighting in the NDP. I simply point out to the media there (sic) presents (sic) on the web. I hope you have a good one.”
I responded with some questions in my mind that remained unanswered: “But how did you discover their presence on the web?" I asked. "Did you search on terms? Which terms? What made you decide to search? Or did someone else tell you about them? Who?”
Torrie’s response was to repeat his original response —“I have no further comment other than to say that I had nothing to do with the constructing or posting on facebook and youtube of any material related to media stories regarding infighting in the NDP”—this time minus the invitation to “have a good one.”
I guess we’ll have to draw our own conclusions on what Torrie did or didn’t do, what he knew or didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it…
But please, do have a good one…
