i thought i would update this considering recent developments.

Rob Ford takes leave as recent drug videos emerge
ROBYN DOOLITTLE AND GREG MCARTHUR
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Apr. 30 2014, 9:14 PM EDT
Last updated Thursday, May. 01 2014, 2:42 PM EDT
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A second video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what has been described as crack cocaine by a self-professed drug dealer was secretly filmed in his sister’s basement early Saturday morning.

The clip, which was viewed by two Globe and Mail reporters, shows Mr. Ford taking a drag from a long copper-coloured pipe, exhaling a cloud of smoke and then frantically shaking his right hand. The footage is part of a package of three videos that the drug dealer says he surreptitiously shot around 1:15 a.m., and which he says he is now selling for “at least six figures.”

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The footage comes to light weeks after Mr. Ford embarked on a re-election campaign styled on the importance of second chances and forgiving mistakes. Nearly a year ago, the mayor thrust himself into worldwide infamy when another drug dealer, Mohamed Siad, tried to sell another video of the mayor allegedly smoking crack to media outlets in Canada and the United States. At the time, the mayor denied using the drug, only to later admit that he had smoked crack cocaine in a “drunken stupor” and said that he was not an addict.

Since then Mr. Ford has been filmed numerous times in public appearing erratic and acting impaired. In each instance, the mayor has admitted to drinking, but never to using drugs. A few weeks ago when asked directly if he was continuing to use drugs, Mr. Ford said: “You guys ask stupid questions.”

Approached at City Hall Wednesday evening, Mr. Ford declined to respond to questions about the video. Shortly after The Globe confronted Mr. Ford, he issued a statement. "I have decided to take a leave from campaigning and from my duties as Mayor to seek immediate help," he said.

In one of the clips shown to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, the mayor rapidly shifts his weight back and forth on the spot, talking into his cellphone and his right arm swinging at his side. When the camera pans around the room, a man that looks like Alessandro “Sandro” Lisi, the mayor’s former driver who has been charged with drug dealing and extortion, can be seen in the background. Mr. Ford’s sister, Kathy, who has admitted in media interviews to being a drug addict, is sitting in front of her brother. In the last of three clips, Mr. Ford is holding the pipe and speaking to his sister.

A man who answered Mr. Lisi’s cellphone told The Globe not to call back. Mr. Lisi’s lawyer, Seth Weinstein, said: “I think the only thing I can tell you now is that, until such time the video’s contents are authenticated, it would be inappropriate to comment any further.” A reporter attempted to contact Ms. Ford at her home, but there was no answer.

In all three clips, the mayor is wearing a white shirt and a dark-coloured tie with a pattern of thin white marks. This is the same shirt-and-tie combination he was wearing Friday afternoon at a press conference where he was critical of the dismissal of Gene Jones, who was appointed by the mayor to run the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and was removed after a damning ombudsman investigation. The drug dealer who showed The Globe the videos said that the mayor was also ranting about Mr. Jones’s ouster in his sister’s basement. In one of the video clips, the camera pans onto a second cellphone, which is flipped open and shows the time and date.

Unlike the first notorious video that captured the mayor apparently smoking crack cocaine, the mayor is not smoking from a glass pipe, rather a metal one. Scott MacIntyre, the former common-law spouse of Kathy Ford who is now suing the mayor, said in an interview that the mayor’s sister smokes crack from metal pipes that can also be used to smoke marijuana. When shown a photo of the mayor holding the pipe, Mr. MacIntyre said it is similar to the crack pipes that the mayor’s sister has used. “She uses those brass elbows,” he said, referring to plumbing that can be converted into a pipe.

All three clips were shot in a cluttered, dimly lit room with a white tile ceiling. The drug dealer selling the video identified it as the basement of Ms. Ford’s home. When asked what the ceiling of Ms. Ford’s basement looks like, Mr. MacIntyre said it has white perforated tiles.

The drug dealer who approached The Globe said that the audio on the three clips was not available because the speaker on his phone was broken when he recorded the footage. The dealer said he supplied the crack that was smoked that night and that he had decided to sell the footage to “make money.” He supplied an alias to The Globe and urged the paper to publish his nickname because: “I want someone to come to me.” The Globe is not publishing that nickname because of concerns about the drug dealer’s intentions.

The Globe cannot confirm the substance inside the pipe.

Reached late last night, Mr. Ford’s long-time criminal lawyer Dennis Morris questioned the authenticity of the video. “If these guys are drug dealers and there’s money involved, they can say whatever they want to get more money, to extract more money from the people who are paying.”

It’s difficult for anyone to prove what the mayor is smoking in the video, Mr. Morris said. “So say for example it was marijuana,” he said. “Would [you] pay more for a video if I told you it was marijuana or crack cocaine?”

The Globe did not purchase the video but it did buy a series of screen grabs from the three clips.

The Globe reporters met the dealer and one of his associates, who said he was not in Ms. Ford’s basement but also identified himself as a drug dealer, at a strip-mall parking lot west of Toronto. The drug dealer selling the video said that he sold drugs to the mayor several times over the past year.

Since the first crack video emerged, his brother and campaign manager, Councillor Doug Ford, has repeatedly said that voters aren’t concerned with the mayor’s drug use.

“You’re out of touch with what the people care about. People don’t care about that,” he said in January.

Mayor Rob Ford's pals the scariest of the scary, docs show

michele-mandel BY MICHELE MANDEL ,TORONTO SUN
FIRST POSTED: FRIDAY, MAY 09, 2014 09:59 PM EDT | UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 09, 2014 10:28 PM EDT
anthony smith monir kasim Mohammad Khattak
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is seen posing with Anthony Smith, left, who was gunned down outside a King St. W. club, in a photo released by Gawker. Mohammad Khattak is seen on the right and Monir Kasim is second from the right.
Article


TORONTO - Judge the mayor by the terrifying company that he kept.

Not just riff raff from the wrong side of the tracks. The Dixon City Bloods, Rob Ford’s alleged go-to guys for drugs, are the scariest of the scary, suspected of ordering murders, running $2,500 pistols and machine-guns and trafficking in large amounts of cocaine.

It’s not that we didn’t already know Ford allegedly bought his drugs from gangsters. But the latest court documents unsealed late Friday reveal the truly frightening nature of this violent Etobicoke gang that funnelled guns and narcotics from Windsor to Toronto — and allegedly counted the mayor of Toronto as a friend and customer.

When Toronto Police launched Project Traveller last year, they had no idea their investigation into the Dixon crew would soon intersect with Ford and the many unsavoury members who were his associates. This latest release of Traveller court documents offers a chilling peak at the men in Ford’s netherworld.

Liban Siyad — the alleged drug dealer called to the Windsor Rd. “crack house” to supply Ford on April 20, 2013? Police allege that on March 28, 2013, he said, “OK halal meat,” which they interpreted as Siyad instructing “Anthony Smith, Mohammad Khattak and Ahmed Dirie to attack ‘Post’ as retaliation. As a result of this attempt of retaliation Anthony Smith was shot and murdered.”

Both photographed a month earlier with a bleary-eyed Ford in that infamous picture, Smith and Khattak were gunned down outside Loki Lounge on King St. W. After news spread that Smith had died, alleged fellow gangbanger Ayanle Omar is intercepted, according to police, saying that he’ll import “five guns from Windsor to Toronto for the purpose of arming members of the Dixon Crew” for a gang war.

On March 31, police contend Omar’s alleged gun runner tried to evade the OPP by crashing through the underground garage at 340 Dixon Rd. and abandoning the car.

According to the police document, Monir Kasim, the third man photographed with the mayor, is wiretapped saying, “Me personally, if I was to shoot somebody, I’d make sure they die.” He also allegedly complains that he’s trying to get his own firearm because “everybody in Toronto and their moms have guns.”

As the police outlined in their request for search warrants: “Members of this criminal organization live a high-risk lifestyle. In fact, during the course of Project Traveller, named party Anthony Smith was violently murdered as a result of being shot in head. This event lead to several interceptions that indicated members of the criminal organization were arming themselves and preparing for retaliation.”

Mohamed Siad, the man who allegedly sold crack to the mayor and filmed him on his iPhone, is accused in these court documents of being a prolific drug dealer and a Windsor-to-Toronto gun smuggler who paid women to be his mules. He’s also one of the two men that Ford’s good friend Alexander “Sandro” Lisi is charged with threatening because, police allege, he believed he “may be in possession of the video recording.”


Project Traveller Documents Named City Hall Lobbyist
CBC | Posted: 05/09/2014 7:56 pm EDT

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The connection between the high-profile police raids last summer known as Project Traveller and city hall were not limited to the video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack. CBC News has learned a city hall lobbyist is named in the police warrants.

Documents released by the court on Friday reveal a home in the city's west end belonging to Tim Lambrinos, a lobbyist for the adult entertainment industry in Toronto and a former executive assistant to Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti, caught the attention of investigators last year.

Lambrinos also sits on the board of the Business Improvement Area that Mammoliti started.

The house, owned by Lambrinos and his brother Chris, was raided by police but turned up nothing. Neither men were charged.

Police filed a 76-page document last year detailing the investigation stemming from Project Traveller. Police suspected at the time they would find find four guns in the home that had been smuggled into Canada via Windsor by the Dixon Hill Bloods gang. But the search turned up nothing.

The Project Traveller raid yielded dozens of arrests in what was a lengthy guns and gangs investigation targeting the local Dixon Bloods gang. It also netted a copy of a video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack, confirmed by police Chief Bill Blair in the fall.

Windsor resident Allyson Steill was charged with helping arrange gun sales. The documents suggest police used wiretaps and other surveillance.


Lambrinos said he is not in any way connected to Project Traveller. He concedes the police raided his home, but insists it was in error.

"I think we need to support the police in some aspects, but on the other hand, whatever judge pretended that there was some evidence about my home was erroneous," said Lambrinos.