Gerald Butts Offers Serpentine Explanation for Quitting as Trudeau's Brain

Asked by Liberal MP, Randy Boissonnault, during Wedenesday's Parliamentary Justice Committee hearing why he quit his job as the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, Gerald Butts offered this gem of snake-like obfuscation:

I think I was put in a position where I had to ask my colleagues to fight another colleague over accusations a colleague was making, and I think that put the prime minister in an impossible position given the nature of our friendship.

Which interpreted, means:

I was put in a position = 

Justin wanted this.

I had to* ask my colleagues to fight another colleague =

I persuaded various cabinet minsters to make snide comments about then Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jodie Wilson-Raybould, with the intention of making the obdurate bitch resign from cabinet, thereby making way for some malleable tool who would follow directions and tell the Director of Public Prosecutions to drop the prosecution of SNC-Lavelin on charges of bribery and corruption, as conviction would have detrimental consequences for the Prime Minister.

over accusations a colleague was making =

The accusation being the fully justified objections that Jodie Wilson-Raybould had addressed to the Prime Minister and others, concerning efforts by Butts, the Head of the Civil Service, the Minister of Finance, the Deputy Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister's legal advisers, and the Prime Minister himself to interfere in the independent action of the Attorney General and the Federal Prosecution Service concerning the ongoing prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on charges of bribery and corruption. 

and I think that put the prime minister in an impossible position given the nature of our friendship =

It would have been totally out of character for me to have instigated the campaign of vilification against Jodie Wilson-Raybould without the Prime Minister's knowledge and approval, therefore, as a longtime close friend of the Prime Minister I am resigning to create the impression that the whole dirty scheme was entirely my own idea and carried out contrary to the commitment of the Prime Minister (if any) to the rule of law, even when the application of the law causes him a massive pain in the arse.

———

* Note the reference to compulsion: "I had to." In other words, what Butts did appears to have been something contrary to his own judgement of what was right, and must, therefore, have been ordered by the Prime Minister.

Related:

CBC: SNC-Lavalin loses bid for judicial review of prosecution decision