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Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over the partygate, the Commons privileges committee has ruled.
The long-awaited report by the cross-party group of MPs was published on Thursday morning.
In an angry statement, Johnson said the report was “the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”.
He quit as an MP last week after being told in advance of its conclusions, launching a furious attack on the committee for conducting a “witch hunt”.
If he had not preempted the report by resigning, it is likely his punishment would have triggered a by-election in his seat.
Johnson denied having lied to parliament when he repeatedly said Covid rules were followed in Downing Street.
The former prime minister said he made the assertion having been reassured by his staff it was true. But the committee rejected his defence.
Johnson said: “This is rubbish. It is a lie. In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.
“For the privileges committee to use its prerogatives in this anti-democratic way, to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination – that is beneath contempt.”
In a last-ditch attempt to disparage the Tory-majority panel on the eve of publication, Johnson called for its most senior Conservative member to resign.
He accused Bernard Jenkin of “monstrous hypocrisy” after the Guido Fawkes website reported the MP had gone to a drinks party in parliament while Covid restrictions were in place in 2020.
But Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper said this was a “typical distraction tactic” from the ex-PM “that doesn’t change the fact he broke the law and lied about it”.
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