Detectives have been granted access to phone records belonging to Mayor Rob Ford and several of his former staffers, according to a new batch of court documents released Monday afternoon.
The documents related to Project Brazen 2, state that police were granted a production order for the release of phone records associated with Ford’s cellular phone and a number belonging to Ford’s vehicle’s OnStar system on January 14th, 2014.
Police were also granted a production order for phone records associated with the cellular phones of Ford’s former staffers Tom Beyer and David Price at the same time, according to the documents.
The period covered by the production order was Feb. 17, 2013 to May 26, 2013. The court documents say that investigators believe a video recording showing Ford with a glass pipe was filmed on Feb. 17, 2013. Media outlets reported on the video the evening of May 16.
Police currently awaiting delivery of all of the data, the documents say.
Speaking with CP24 Monday afternoon, Ford’s lawyer Dennis Morris said the fact that police are searching Ford’s phone should not be viewed as any indication of guilt.
“My question is why didn’t they do this earlier?” he said. “This isn’t news.”
Ford was also asked about the police request for his phone records as he left city hall, but ignored the questions.
“I saved taxpayers a billion dollars,” he said. “I encourage people to come to my campaign launch.”
In February, Ford told the Toronto Sun that he would give police access to his phone records if asked, joking that they would “need an army” to go through them because of all the constituent calls he fields.
Ford then backtracked on that comment, telling reporters a day later that police would need a warrant.
“Would you give up anything?” he said at the time. “Why would I give it up without a warrant?”
100 text messages
Ford’s friend and occasional driver Alexander Lisi is charged with extortion in connection with his alleged attempts to recover the video on May 18, 2013, two days after the Toronto Star and Gawker reported its existence.
According to the documents, a search of data extracted from an iPhone belonging to Lisi on May 18 found more than 100 text messages were sent or received by Lisi, including some from persons close to Ford, and other suspected gang members under investigation by police.
In order to obtain the data, an officer had to travel to Apple’s headquarters in California in February.
The court documents suggest that an Apple technician was able to retrieve nine to 10 gigabytes of data from Lisi’s phone, the majority of which was in the form of video and audio files, though text messages, pictures, phone access logs and contacts were also recovered from the phone.
The data was placed onto an external hard drive and brought back to Toronto.
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