Why Trudeau’s Plea-Deal Headache Just Got a Lot Worse

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s rough start to the year has gotten much worse. It was bad enough when a newspaper charged his office had improperly leaned on his former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to settle fraud and corruption charges against a prominent Quebec construction firm. The damage grew graver when she told lawmakers the article was true -- and that Trudeau himself had exerted pressure she considered improper.

Wilson-Raybould, who until January was the government’s top lawyer and Trudeau’s justice minister, gave a detailed account of how the prime minister and his most senior aides pressured her over several months to “help out” SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., an engineering giant based in Trudeau’s home town of Montreal. Wilson-Raybould said this week in Ottawa she “experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere,” and that she faced “veiled threats” about what might happen if she refused to order public prosecutors to allow SNC-Lavalin to settle attempted bribery and fraud charges out of court.