Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (34 page)

The next morning, the mayor invited reporters to a press conference at his local Etobicoke Esso station, the same gas station where police had watched many of those mysterious package handoffs between Ford and Lisi. Ford looked calm and confident. “He’s a good guy,” Ford said of Lisi. “I don’t throw my friends under the bus.”

Numerous sources say that behind the scenes both Rob and Doug Ford were nervous. And with good reason. If police had
been following Lisi, the mayor knew he was likely caught up in that investigation somehow. Doug Ford had his own political career to think about. He had his sights set on being premier of Ontario within the next two years. If Rob went down, the whole Ford brand might go with him.

Within days of Lisi’s arrest, word got around that police had compiled nearly five hundred pages of intelligence to request a search warrant in connection with the arrest—which is unheard of, considering the relatively minor charges that were laid. There was obviously more to it. I, along with every other journalist in Toronto covering the Ford story, had heard that police were investigating the mayor, but we had no idea how elaborate that probe was until details of those documents began to leak out. The Cessna. Tracking devices. A secret video camera. The surveillance teams. The wiretaps. The information gathered apparently contained details about the crack cocaine video and Ford’s drug use, and included interviews with former staff members that would be devastating to the mayor.

Media lawyers—including some from the
Star
—applied to have those documents made public. On October 30, Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer became a hero to every journalist in the city when he agreed to release a redacted version of the five-hundred-page document, allowing reporters to see the part that formed the core case against Lisi—a part in which the mayor played a starring role. In November, Nordheimer would consider releasing the rest.

Nordheimer saw no reason to delay. A PDF of the Project Brazen 2 documents would be emailed to reporters the next morning.

ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 31
,
Star
reporter Jayme Poisson picked me up outside the same Starbucks where I’d met Mohamed Farah seven months earlier. We got to the
Star
around 8:30
A.M
., and already the whole place was buzzing. It felt a lot like an election night. Every desk was filled. Reporters were jogging around the newsroom while editors were shouting at one another to figure out where so-and-so was stationed or which reporter would be chasing which councillor for reaction. Since I’m usually stationed at City Hall, I grabbed a desk with Kevin Donovan’s investigative team. Every reporter in the city was going to be chasing the same story with the same information. Our job, as soon as the Project Brazen 2 documents came in, was to plow through those nearly five hundred pages the fastest, pull out the highlights, and present them in the best way possible. Donovan divided the document up into five sections. I was given pages 100 to 180. Another reporter on the team was assigned to go through surveillance photos. Each of us would write up relevant bits for a quick-hit web story while also recording any names, addresses, and anecdotes that needed following up.

The search warrant application was due any time after 9
A.M
. We had an idea of what the full document included, but it wasn’t clear how much Ford would be implicated in this first partial release. Would it show photos of Ford buying? Would it link the mayor to the Dixon City Bloods? What about his relationship with the Basso family at 15 Windsor Road, or the attempts to retrieve the crack video?

The mayor was clearly on edge. When he left his home that morning at 9:30
A.M.
, he lost his temper at a group of reporters who swarmed him near his car.

“Are you a focus of the police probe?”

“Guys, can you get off my driveway, please?” He began repeating the sentence over and over.

“What can you tell the people of Toronto about your involvement?”

“Can you get off my property, please! Okay don’t— Get off my property!” he started to scream as the crush of reporters and photographers retreated to the sidewalk.

When a
Sun
photographer stepped back onto the driveway to take Ford’s photo, the mayor angrily approached him. “What don’t you understand? Get off the property, partner!” he hollered, shoving the camera lens aside.

Around the time the mayor pulled into City Hall, the photos connected to Project Brazen 2 were released. Many looked like something out of the
Cops
reality show. Grainy nighttime photos of the mayor and Sandro Lisi walking near his SUV. Aerial photos of Ford’s Escalade in an empty parking lot. Gas station surveillance footage. Mug shots of Ford’s friends.

Then the document itself came in ten minutes later. It was worse than I thought it would be.

I started reading a police interview with former Ford staff member Chris Fickel.

In November, December 2012 and into January 2013,

FICKEL noticed that LISI was driving the Mayor around a lot of the time.

FICKEL does not know where the Mayor got marihuana [
sic
] from but has heard that “Sandro” may be the person who provides the Mayor with marihuana and possibly cocaine.…

FICKEL does not know what LISI does for a living but believes he is a drug dealer.

FICKEL bases this information on rumors but it seems to be common knowledge.

I read about the mysterious envelope handoff at the Etobicoke Esso station on July 11. The timing was shocking to me. This would have been just a few days after Toronto was hit with a massive rainstorm that in a matter of minutes had turned highways into rivers, commuter trains into sinking ships, and basements into swimming pools. The July 8 flood was the most costly natural disaster in Ontario’s history. And there was Ford, in the middle of this crisis, engaged in suspicious behaviour.

The revelations kept coming with each new page.

The mayor’s recently fired chief of staff, Mark Towhey, told detectives he suspected Lisi was a drug dealer. George Christopoulos told police that a young aide had “brought up concerns that Lisi was providing the mayor with illegal drugs” and that Lisi was driving the mayor to “hot spots.” On June 15, police watched the mayor’s executive assistant, Tom Beyer, meet with Lisi at a grocery store near Diane Ford’s home. Lisi got in Beyer’s car, they drove a short distance, and then parted ways. The documents also indicated that police believed 15 Windsor Road was a drug den and that Ford may have been paying the Bassos’ water bills.

The most interesting details related to phone records. Ford and Lisi were in almost constant communication. Lisi was also in regular contact with people in Ford’s office. But most damning was that the records suggested something nefarious had happened after the crack video story went live, with the
mayor phoning Lisi, who phoned Basso, who phoned Mohamed Siad—the dealer selling the footage—then Basso and Lisi speaking again, then Lisi phoning the mayor. This continued throughout the week. And on day eight, the mayor announced there was no video.

About an hour after the documents arrived, my cell phone rang. It was a cop I’m friendly with.

“The chief is having a press conference in half an hour. You’re gonna wanna watch it,” he said.

“Can you give me a hint? Are you arresting him?”

“No. Just watch.”

“If you’re not arresting him, then what’s the big deal?”

“Just trust me. You’re going to love this.”

AT 11:30 A.M.,
pretty well everyone in the
Star
newsroom put down their work and headed for one of the large TV screens in the newsroom, where local news was running Chief Bill Blair’s press conference live. We were clustered into two groups, one near the editors’ hub in the middle and one at the back, where most of the reporters working on the story were sitting.

Right on time, Chief Blair walked to the podium with a prepared speech. He spoke in his trademark choppy, cop-talk manner.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Blair began. “As you are aware, the Toronto Police Service undertook a very significant major investigation last year. It culminated on June 13 of this year with the arrest of several dozen suspects, the laying of over two hundred charges, and the execution of numerous search warrants.…”

Where was he going with this? I thought.

“As a result of the evidence that was seized on June 13, at the conclusion of Project Traveller, a number of electronic devices, computers, telephones, and hard drives were seized.…”

Hard drives? Seized? No. They couldn’t have …

“On October 29, on Tuesday of this week, we received information from our computer technology section that in the examination of a hard drive that had been seized on June 13, they were able to identify a number of files that had been deleted and that they were able to recover those files.…”

There were gasps in the newsroom. I covered my mouth. I think I grabbed some nearby person’s wrist, but I can’t quite remember.

“As a result, I have been advised [it was so like Blair to draw this out] that we are now in possession of a recovered digital video file—”

The newsroom exploded. People cheered and clapped and punched their arms in the air. It was hard to hear the rest of the chief’s speech.

“—relevant to the investigations that have been conducted. That file contains video images, which appear to be those images which were previously reported in the press.”

He couldn’t quite conceal a smirk as he delivered his last line to the room of stunned reporters: “I’ll be happy to take your questions now.”

My eyes welled with tears. Numerous others reacted the same way. It wasn’t about being vindicated. We’d always known we were reporting honestly. It was about the truth coming out to the public. It was about loving the job we do, and knowing how important it was. I felt proud to be working at the
Star
, to
be working at a newspaper that had the guts to pursue this kind of story, for having the fortitude to stand by it, and to keep the pressure on despite intense criticism from both Fords. We’d all been in this together. We’d all been called liars. We’d all watched the erosion of trust in our profession, courtesy the Ford brothers’ attacks on the media. Every reporter, photographer, and editor had spent the last six months fielding the same questions from family, friends, and strangers: “So … is the video real?” The truth had come out. Toronto was going to get to see the video. I will never forget that moment as long as I live. A few minutes later, the
Star
’s publisher, John Cruickshank, called everyone to the centre of the newsroom.

“This was a victory for journalism,” he said.

For Rob Ford, it was the beginning of the worst week of his life.

ON THAT THURSDAY MORNING
, Police Chief Bill Blair didn’t just confirm that the video was real, he also announced that investigators had charged Alexander “Sandro” Lisi with extortion over alleged attempts to retrieve the video after the
Star
’s and Gawker’s stories ran. Blair also revealed that police had recovered “several” video files from the hard drive, and that one other was “relevant” to the Project Brazen 2 investigation. And while Blair refused to discuss the specific contents of the footage—other than to say that it was likely filmed at Windsor Road, that it showed Mayor Ford, and that his actions were “consistent” with what had been reported in the media—the chief did offer some personal reaction when a reporter asked if the video had shocked him.

“I’m disappointed,” Blair said after a short pause. “I think, as
a citizen of Toronto, I’m disappointed. I know this is a traumatic issue for the citizens of this city and for the reputation of this city, and that concerns me.”

At City Hall, it was pandemonium. Councillors began calling for the mayor’s resignation, but in what should have been a surprise to no one, Ford said he wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he suggested that the chief was wrong. “I think everybody has seen the allegations against me today,” Ford said. “I wish I could come out and defend myself. Unfortunately, I can’t, ’cause it’s before the court, and that’s all I can say right now.”

But this time it wasn’t working. Across the spectrum, city councillors were severing ties with the Ford administration. The next day, the
Toronto Star
, the
National Post
, and the
Toronto Sun
published editorials calling for Ford to step down. Four days after that,
The Globe and Mail
followed suit.

Council doesn’t have impeachment procedures. Only the Ontario provincial government has the power to remove the mayor of Toronto, but that kind of intervention had never happened before. It seemed like a dangerous precedent to set. Mayor Ford may have become unfit for office because of his links to criminality, his drug issues, and his thuggish behaviour. But what if, in the future, city councillors who simply disagreed with a mayor decided to oust him or her? No one, from the governing Liberals to the opposition Conservatives to city councillors of every stripe, was eager to go down that road.

Councillors decided to go a different route. They began poring through the City of Toronto Act, trying to find ways to marginalize the disgraced mayor. Some of Ford’s power was protected by provincial law, such as his role as the city’s chief executive. That couldn’t be changed. But some of his authority
was non-statutory—it had been delegated by council. And what council giveth, council could taketh away.

The most obvious target was the mayor’s ability to appoint committee chairs. Taking that away would essentially dismantle Ford’s caucus, freeing up right-wing councillors to oppose the mayor openly. Ford had only one vote on council. The power of the office lay in the influence the mayor had. Without control of committees, Ford would have no whip. Next, council looked at the mayor’s special authority during a crisis. The mayor’s ability to declare, and end, a state of emergency was guaranteed by provincial legislation, but what happened in between wasn’t covered. Council wanted to transfer that power to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly.