THE Crown Office told Kenny MacAskill there were no messages from Peter Murrell pressuring the police to investigate Alex Salmond, the former First Minister has told the Holyrood inquiry.
Murrell, who is chief executive of the SNP and is married to Nicola Sturgeon, has admitted sending texts to colleagues which appeared to show him urging colleagues to go to the police.
MacAskill, the MP for East Lothian and former justice secretary, claimed he was sent them anonymously and had passed them to prosecutors and the Holyrood inquiry.
READ MORE: LIVE: Alex Salmond gives evidence under oath to Scottish Parliament committee
The messages appear to show Murrell backing prosecution action against Salmond in January 2019, the month he won a civil legal battle against Sturgeon’s government and was separately charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, for which he was later acquitted.
The first reads: “Totally agree folk should be asking the police questions ... report now with the PF on charges which leaves police twiddling their thumbs. So good time to be pressurising them. Would be good to know Met looking at events in London.”
The second message reads: “TBH the more fronts he is having to firefight on the better for all complainers. So CPS action would be a good thing.”
Speaking about the messages - which Salmond supporters believe point to a plot by senior allies of the First Minister to bring him down - the former FM told the hearing: "In July of last year because rumours had been current in the SNP for some time about such messages, Kenny MacAskill wrote to the Crown Office, and I have a copy of the letter which I will give to the committee, asking if there was any evidence of pressurising the police by Mr Murrell and he got a reply saying there was no such evidence.
"Not a reply saying that the messages had been looked at. There was no such evidence that Mr Murrell pressurised the police and the messages had been inspected ... Subsequently Mr MacAskill, as you know, made those messages available to this committee and to the Crown Office, as you say they have now been confirmed as genuine."
Salmond went on to point to other text messages including one from the Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans to senior civil servant Barbara Allison - which said “battle maybe lost but not the war" - on the day the judicial review was lost by the Government.
READ MORE: Alex Salmond: Viewers give their reaction to former FM's evidence to MSPs' probe
Allison originally claimed she deleted and then forgot about the message which allies of Salmond also believe is evidence of a high-level conspiracy against him.
However, she later told the committee this had been an “unintended inaccuracy” and she had received it after all.
Salmond told today's hearing: "There are many other messages which I am prohibited from sharing with this committee. When a police investigation starts all other activity should stop. It is not for the SNP or Scottish Government to supplant the police in their investigatory function."
Speaking earlier he described first learning about the messages including ones he said showed witnesses being pressurised.
"It was one of the most extraordinary days of my life ... I am not allowed to describe in any detail the messages. But let's say I recognise the one you have just read out. There are many other messages and what they speak to is behaviour which I would never have countenanced from people I have known in some cases for 30 years," he said.
"In my opinion there has been behaviour which is about, not just pressurising the police like the one you've read out, but pressuring witnesses, collusion over witnesses.
"We are talking about the construction of evidence because the police some how were thought to be inadequate in finding it themselves and the point about this is. On 25 August 2018, I think it was, a police investigation started. When a police investigation starts these matters are for the police. They have the investigatory function. They don't need assistance from an Inspector Murrell or Sergeant Ruddick or Constable McCann or special constable Allison ... they have no investigative function."
Sturgeon has denied any conspiracy against Salmond and she will give evidence to the committee next week.
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