Mayor Rob Ford stood before a crush of reporters Thursday afternoon and had nothing to say about fresh revelations from police that he appears in a video they retrieved during a criminal investigation.
Ford, who started his day by shoving a cameraman and screaming at reporters camped outside his home to get off his property, stepped out of his office at around 2:30 p.m. to face a barrage of bright lights as dozens of media members and onlookers waited impatiently for him to speak about the allegations against him.
“I wish I could come out and defend myself,” he said. “Unfortunately, I can’t. It’s before the courts. That’s all I can say right now.”
When asked if he planned to step down so that he could deal with the controversy, Ford said he has “no reason to resign."
“I’m going to go back, return my phone calls, do what I’m elected to do, save taxpayers’ money and run a government,” he said.
His voice trailed off as reporters started shouting questions at him about his behaviour, his alleged drug use, and his appearance on a video where he is allegedly seen smoking crack cocaine.
The mayor retreated back into his office without answering a single question.
Ford has been under intense scrutiny since The Toronto Star and Gawker published on May 16 a detailed account of what they said was a video of Ford smoking from what appeared to be a crack pipe. Two reporters from the Star and one from Gawker claimed to have seen it after they were approached by someone trying to sell the iPhone video for a hefty sum. The media outlets never bought the video and the video never surfaced publicly, until today .
On Thursday morning, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair told reporters that during the course of a police investigation into criminal activity, detectives recovered several video files that were deleted from a hard drive. Two of those videos are related to their criminal investigation. Ford appears in at least one of those videos.
The video was not released to the public but will come out as part of the court process, Blair said.
