Even the Post knows this doesn't pass the smell test

From Lorne Gunter in today's Post:

"a couple of quick questions about aspects of this case that have always troubled me: For instance, what part of taking $300,000 in cash, in hotel rooms, from a shady arms dealer, without any documentation, seemed like a good idea at the time?
Even if we forget the source and location of the payments, and allow that they were entirely above board, the optics are self-evidently awful.
Mulroney spokesman Luc Lavoie has referred to the payments from Mr. Schreiber as a "retainer." OK. What law firm or lobby group accepts such large-sum cash retainers, particularly without issuing a receipt and signing a contract that lays out the nature of their services?
There can be little denying Mr. Mulroney took the money. Even Mr. Lavoie's attempts to characterize it as a retainer is an indirect admission. Mr. Mulroney is now just trying to find a classier name for it.
What's more, the former PM paid tax on the money, albeit six years after the fact and only under a sort of amnesty policy offered by Revenue Canada. (And, if anything Mr. Schreiber says is to be believed, the tax was paid only after a bribery scandal involving him broke in Germany and he refused to give Mr. Mulroney a document stating that at no time did the former prime minister "ever solicit or receive" payments from some of the same accounts Mr. Schreiber had allegedly used to make questionable payments to prominent Germans.)"