Canadian mayor set to explode in a geyser of profanity any day now. So a while ago I wanted to write about the whole Rob Ford scandal (to recap, the mayor of Toronto was videotaped smoking crack but the video was mysteriously lost) but since there wasn’t any concrete proof (and Ford is notoriously lawsuit-happy) we decided to not go with it.
In the following days, Ford released a particularly weak-worded denial, the guy selling the video vanished, and the story seemed to go away.
Well, those days are gone: videotape of Rob Ford smoking what appears to be crack cocaine are in the possession of Toronto police, and things are about to go bananas up north. An investigation into the videotape produced hundreds of hours of surveillance video of the rotund Ford meeting with a man named Sandro Lisi (currently in jail on drug charges), as well as Lisi leaving mysterious packages in Ford’s car.
But the big money here is the supposedly “lost” video, which was found on a hard drive. Toronto police chief Bill Blair held a press conference this morning where he confirmed that the man in the video is indeed Rob Ford and the video is “consistent with those that have been previously reported in the press” – i.e. Ford getting down on the glass pipe with some rocks. CTV has the press conference and all of the text of the arrest document (which is very long).
Ford has, of course, refused to comment, only being seen in public losing his cool at a posse of reporters in his driveway questioning him about the investigation.
Right now, Toronto police don’t believe they have anything to actively charge Rob Ford with, but the tubby politician should be more worried about the court of public opinion – 2014 is an election year, and Ford has already announced his intention to run for another term as mayor. This isn’t totally unprecedented – Marion Barry won his way back into the public’s good favor after his crack bust – but I doubt that Ford will be able to do the same.
The good news is that this is just the tip of the iceberg – there’s all sorts of other Ford dirt that is just waiting to come out.