Again Steve, you fail to spot the obvious.
It's difficult to unravel several intertwining complicated issues, but this is how I see it: allegations arose about Salmond's sexual conduct vis-a-vis women he worked with in Bute House. More women came forward as rumours spread, as they do ( postmortem more allegations have surfaced, which doesn't surprise one). Salmond wanted Nicola Sturgeon to try and smooth over the assertions, but instead of the allegations being subject of an internal enquiry, Liz Lloyd leaked them to the
Daily Record. Thereafter they were in the public domain.
Salmond, who was a genius at sniffing out irregular government procedure, successfully challenged how the allegations had been procured and was awarded costs by the Court of Session. That was quite separate from the Police investigations as to the treatment of women under his employ.
To further complicate matters in January 2020 it was discovered that money supposedly ring-fenced to fight a second independence referendum by the SNP was unaccounted for. There subsequently followed an investigation by Police Scotland, Operation Branchform. SNP treasurer Colin Beattie, Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell were all arrested, though the latter is the only one to date who has been charged with embezzlement.
Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the Ministerial Code under the Hamilton Inquiry. She is about to divorce her husband, which tells me the lie of the land. How she could be so stupid as to be a co-conspirator in any illegal practice when she has a steady income, a nice pension and probably a book deal in the offing beats me. I will not rush to judgement on the matter. I also reject the idea of a conspiracy against Alex Salmond. He brought the allegations of sexual misconduct upon himself, he abused his powerful position as First Minister of Scotland in an attempt to gain sexual favours by women in his employ, and was after the loss of the referendum campaign in 2014 no threat to Nicola, and anyway became an MP at Westminster, which would surely have eroded any residual support he maintained amongst SNP supporters.
