O’Brien’s lawyer, Michael Edelson, was cross-examining Kilrea about phone calls and meetings with reporter Gary Dimmock when court recessed Wednesday.
Beginning in February 2007, Dimmock wrote a series of stories for the Citizen about Kilrea’s claim that O’Brien offered to help him land a federal job on the National Parole Board in exchange for pulling out of the 2006 mayoralty race. O’Brien is on trial for purported influence peddling over the alleged offer. In questioning Wednesday, Edelson walked Kilrea through his first contacts with the reporter, whom he had met at a charity event at the Lieutenant’s Pump bar on Elgin Street and later at an Ottawa Senators game. Edelson suggested that Kilrea’s wife, Dina Koukis, could have been the source of the e-mails — an assertion Kilrea rejected. Then, Edelson described how OPP investigator Brian Mason spoke to Dimmock about the e-mails. The reporter told him that he had received copies in a “brown envelope†from an unknown woman, Edelson continued. The detective was skeptical, Edelson said, because Dimmock described a woman tall and thin with grey hair — the direct opposite of Koukis. “Dimmock lied to Mason to protect you and Dina Koukis,†Edelson asserted to Kilrea just before the session ended.
While the first two days of Kilrea’s cross-examination were largely devoted to his various forays into local politics, Edelson on Wednesday turned the focus on the journalists who report on Ottawa politics.