Document deepens allegations
Drunk at work, while driving; ties to suspected prostitutes among claims about mayor
TORONTO Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is facing a slew of new allegations, including that he was intoxicated at work, drank while driving and associated with suspected prostitutes, according to a court document released Wednesday, just hours after a council vote urging him to step down.
In a motion that passed 375, Toronto city council voted to ask Ford to step down as mayor to deal with his personal problems.
Minutes before the vote, Ford shrugged his shoulders and said, “I effed up” and said there was nothing more he could say.
It was the end of a humiliating session of city council for Ford, who was forced to admit to buying illegal drugs over the last two years, while at the same time saying he had “absolutely” zero tolerance for drugs, guns and gangs.
The mayor was also accused of physically “threatening” Denzil Minnan-Wong, the councillor who pushed the motion calling on him to step down.
The developments came as city council debated MinnanWong’s motion to ask the mayor to step aside and deal with his problems after he admitted to smoking crack cocaine while in a “drunken stupor.”
According to evidence collected in a police investigation released Wednesday, former members of Ford’s staff suspected he was doing a variety of drugs, including lines of cocaine and OxyContin, and drinking at city hall, in public and in his car, as well as spending time with escorts, spewing verbal abuse and assaulting female staff.
The allegations, which have not been proven in court, are just some in a slew of details released by Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer Wednesday afternoon.
The new information comes from police interviews with several former and present members of the mayor’s office staff, including Mark Towhey, David Price, George Christopolous and Isaac Ransom.
The report paints a picture of how the mayor’s apparent substance abuse problems strained relations within his team. It also reveals their efforts to manage the crisis in the face of his denials.
On the day the crack video allegations surfaced, Ransom, then special assistant of communications to Ford, recalled asking him point blank if the video was true, the documents read.
“Mayor Ford denied it and said that this is not the worst that is going to happen. This is going to blow up and there will be people in bigger trouble than him,” Ransom said. He also told police he believed the video existed.
The mayor was provided with three speech choices at the time, interviews with Ransom and Towhey reveal; take a leave of absence, resign or deny, deny, deny.
Towhey was fired because he urged Ford to get help, the documents read — but he didn’t believe the mayor would remember firing him. Ford was in “deep denial,” the documents read.
Ransom added that, according to the affidavit, “Mayor Ford was delaying his response to the media about the alleged crack cocaine video and was going off the grid a lot during this scandal. He would disappear for weeks at a time.”
Two days after reports of the alleged crack video broke in May, police started investigating “suggestions” that the recording of the mayor was stored on Anthony Smith’s cellphone, which was reportedly stolen after the 21-yearold was gunned down outside a Toronto nightclub in March — according a portion of the investigation that was unsealed Wednesday.
But after less than a day of interviews with the mayor’s staff — the contents of which were still partially redacted in Wednesday’s release — police postponed the probe for fear that further interviews would “potentially compromise” the lengthy Project Traveller guns, drug and gangs investigation, according to the court documents.
Christopolous, the former communications director, told police at least two staff members voiced concerns “about the mayor’s tendency to drink and drive,” the documents reveal.