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Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole owes Jamie Lall an apology, a Calgary lawsuit claims.
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Oh, and $2 million.
Those are the remedies that Lall, a former staffer for Peter MacKay’s leadership campaign, is seeking over what he says were false accusations by members of O’Toole’s team that he was behind the theft of computer data.
In a statement of claim filed in Calgary’s Queen’s Bench Court, Lall, a former provincial Conservative candidate, says members of O’Toole’s leadership campaign team tried to intimidate him into providing information about who was behind the attack.
The court document says Lall, who was a Calgary regional organizer for MacKay’s leadership bid, agreed to a June 19, 2020 conference call with three of O’Toole’s campaign leaders, Arundeep Sandhu, James Ross and Walied Soliman.
“During this phone call, Mr. Jamie Lall was threatened and intimidated in an attempt to coerce and extort him into providing information to the defendants,” the claim states.
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It says that Lall did not have the information sought, but was threatened with criminal prosecution if he did not provide it.
During the call, Soliman said someone with an address in Richmond Hill, Ontario. The IP address and a Calgary IP address had logged into his Zoom account “and leaked one of his campaign videos to a Quebec-based news outlet,” the suit alleges.
Soliman said that if “Lall did not provide him with the names of MacKay’s ‘higher-ups’ who logged into his account and leaked the video, the O’Toole campaign would have police charge him with a criminal offense and alert media and release a statement ‘pinning’ the leak to… Lall”.
The three told Lall to “think hard about the consequences, and by not ‘playing ball’ with them (he) was putting his life and reputation in jeopardy,” the lawsuit says.
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Later that day, O’Toole and his campaign issued a press release saying that a complaint had been filed with police alleging that “Lall was involved in the ‘theft of sensitive strategic videoconferences,'” the suit says.
The campaign also released a statement naming “Lall as some sort of ‘mastermind’ behind the O’Toole campaign leak.”
“Plaintiff…has suffered continued harm and fear of further threats and attempts to blackmail (him).”
Along with $2 million in damages, the plaintiff seeks “a statement that the defendants publicly apologize.”
No defense statements have been filed challenging the unproven allegations.
On twitter: @KMartinCourts
