You can't make this stuff up:

"He said 'listen, Benoit, people will come out against you, unanimously,' " said Corbeil, one-time boss of the party's Quebec wing. "(He said) 'you'll lose your reputation and you'll lose friends.' " Guy Bertrand, Corbeil's lawyer, said his client felt intimidated by the call. "For him (Corbeil), it was intimidation and we mentioned that to the commission as soon as we could," Bertrand said outside the inquiry at the end of the day's proceedings. Asked whether his client ever feared for his life or his personal safety, the lawyer said: "I'd prefer not to answer those questions. Maybe (Tuesday ) he'll clarify certain things, but it's better not to talk about that publicly." Gagliano admitted later Monday he called Corbeil to give him moral support after he was fired from a university foundation. But the former cabinet minister denied issuing any threats. "It was not intimidation, I was calling a friend," Gagliano said in an interview.

Funny that the "friend" doesn't see it that way. Incidentally, the Globe story says that the call came before Corbeil went public with his story. So I repeat my question of an earlier, abortive post: How did Alfonso know what Corbeil was going to say? If he feared that Corbeil was going to tell a lot of lies -- under oath, which means under penalty of imprisonment for perjury -- how did he know which, among the infinite array of possible lies, he was going to tell? How did he know that everyone else in the party was going to "come out" against him -- unanimously? And why such tender concern for Corbeil's reputation? Or was he concerned that Corbeil would tell the truth? In which case, he would be in no doubt of what Corbeil was going to say. And if everyone else was going to contradict him, it would mean that they were going to tell ... oh, what's that word? It means the opposite of the truth. Then there's this:

Mr. Corbeil testified that a few days after the conversation with Mr. Gagliano, an anonymous person telephoned him. He said the unknown caller mentioned media interviews in which Mr. Corbeil had alleged that political favouritism compromised even judicial appointments. "Where are you going with that? Be careful. Your reputation will suffer," he said he was warned.