01 Nov 2017: James Dornan MSP, without consulting Miss “A”, sent details of a twitter exchange between Mark McDonald and Miss “A”, which he had retained for over a year without the knowledge or permission of either person.

02 Nov 2017: Mark was invited by John Swinney and Liz Lloyd to a meeting at which he was informed that there had been “chatter” among Party members about him in relation to the “Me2” movement.

03 Nov 2017: Lloyd then convened a second meeting with Mark at which she showed him a copy of his messages to Miss A. She did not provide the name of the person that had supplied it to her. but she did say that a complaint that had been lodged against him by an SNP Party member (Dornan). She advised him that his position as a minister of the government was no longer tenable and he would need to resign.

05 Nov 2017: Mark resigned as minister for childcare and early years.

07 Nov 2017: In a weird turn of events Sturgeon dismissed the notion that Mark should resign from Holyrood claiming that “Some may well have thought it was not serious enough to resign for.” Sturgeon’s statement suggested Lloyd acted against Mark McDonald without her knowledge or authority.

08 Nov 2017: Alerted by Sturgeon’s intervention of her belief that the reasons for Mark’s dismissal from his minister post was probably without foundation the SNP “hit squad” identified an urgent need to establish a “Moorov doctrine” pattern of harassment against Mark without delay to prevent his escape from the justice their gang had decided on.*

(*) The Moorov doctrine is a mechanism which applies where a person is accused of two or more separate offences, connected in time and circumstances. In such a case, where each of the offences charged is spoken to by a single credible witness, that evidence may corroborate, and be corroborated by, the other single witnesses, so as to enable the conviction of the accused on all the charges.

11 Nov 2017: A special investigation team, including an ex police officer was contracted, at considerable cost, to “dig for dirt” on Mark.

16 Nov 2017: A third potential complainer surfaced. Mark’s Party membership was immediately suspended and a team of private investigators including an ex-policeman were contracted at considerable expense, to complete investigations and report their findings to the Party’s Compliance Officer by 3 December 2017.

05 Dec 2017: Mark was summoned to meet with representatives from the SNP following which they issued a surprising “no further action” statement saying there was no criminality involved in the allegations against him. But the allegations although trivial were not dismissed. An expensive investigation had revealed nothing of note. Or so it seemed!!!!! The “Moorov Doctrine” manouvre had failed to materialise.

But Dornan continued his unfair pursuit of Mark and demanded that the full content of the allegations forming the “Moorov Doctrine” should be sent to the Ethics Commissioner for decision. Mark was suspended from Holyrood for one month but left politics at the end of parliament in 2021.

Weeks later the incident came under scrutiny of the press and revealed the bad faith of the “witchfinders” in the upper echelon’s of the SNP who claimed to be fair minded.

The heavily canvassed and reluctant complainant was employed by Mark. They and many other Party members attended the Party’s 2015 Xmas function.

The complainant was a young, inexperienced, party researcher new to the party scene who underestimated the adverse effect of over indulging in alcohol consumption. She became quite enamoured with a much older married man Jamie Hepburn, MSP. They left the party to continue their tryst and were away for some time.

Later in the evening Mark noted her behaviour and condition had further deteriorated due to the alcohol and he decided to remove her to the safety of his nearby accommodation. She slept on his bed and he curled up in a quilt on the floor.

The next day the young lady had no recollection of the previous evening. Witnesses confirmed the accuracy of events to the SNP investigators. The young lady when interviewed by private investigators, said her overnight stay in Mark’s bedroom had been uneventful and there was no cause to register a complaint against him. She spoke to Hepburn later and he suggested she shouldn’t mention it to anyone.

Hepburn was subsequently summoned to attend a meeting with very senior SNP people. The content of the meeting was not recorded.

An SNP dossier was sent for decision, to Bill Thomson, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland. There was no mention in it of the 2015 Xmas party or of Hepburn’s inappropriate behaviour. His abuse of the young vulnerable female researcher was whitewashed from the probe.

That left only the matter of the loan of the deposit on a flat of £ 476.14 that Mark had asked his staffer to pay for him in May 2016 and the three week delay in reimbursing the loan.

The Standards Commissioner’s investigation found that Mark’s conduct had “showed a lack of respect” over the flat deposit. That was it!!! No complaint registered but the incident could not be judged by the ethics Commissioner on a single weak case.

Comment: The absence of any judgement by the Ethics Commissioner on his tryst with the young vulnerable staffer leads to the conclusion that Hepburn’s role in events had not been included in the dossier for political purposes.

Thomson’s report singularly addressed the incident in which Mark was a bit lax in failing to pay loan of money back to “Witness B” which was not an allegation of harassment.

The Commissioner’s opinion that Mark had shown Witness B a “lack of respect” was subjective and warranted no mention in his summary opinion. Its inclusion also reduced the charges against Mark to a farcical level all the more unpalatable with the knowledge that Mark had been under severe stress a the time he was waiting to find out if his father had terminal cancer.

The young vulnerable staffer was not offered up by the SNP investigation team to speak to the Ethics Commissoner because the move would risk exposing the events at the Xmas 2015 party. Her evidence was provided to the Ethics Commissioner, via a solicitor nominated by the SNP. It stated she did not wish to participate in the investigation, except to confirm her agreement to the factual information set out in the report.

Many requests for comment that it doctored allegations against Mark to protect Jamie Hepburn from a charge of abusing his position have gone unanswered. His career continues to blossom at the expense of Mark’s which is unfair.