A lawyer for Mayor Ford says the accusation that Mr. Ford is seen on video smoking crack cocaine is “false and defamtory” Dennis S. Morris, whose practice is on John Street, made the declaration in response to the Toronto Star story today (Friday, May 17, 2013) in which two well known reporters. Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan, write that they have screened a cellphone video shown to them by men who are apparently traffickers in crack. A photograph showing someone who looks like the mayor is published with the Star story. The Star says that it was asked to pay a million dollars and other sums of money for the video. It says it paid nothing. On the tape the mayor is said to utter a number of vulgarities and to be clearly impaired. The mayor himself has called the video “ridiculous” and yet another attempt by the Toronto Star to discredit him. He did not comment on the appearance of the story first in the gossip online publication Gawker. The Gawkter story, written by John Cook, is very vitriolic and the writer is conducting a campaign to solicit a sum of $200,000 to buy the video. Mr. Cook observes that the owner of the video may wish to leave town for fear of retribution. As he hustled through City Hall today Mr Ford was hectored by reporters: “Is the video a fake, Mr Ford?” “Why would someone make a fake video?” and similar questions. One of the Mayor’s allies on council, Doug Holyday, said that he did not know what to say except that drug traffickers cannot be trusted. CP24 quotes police spokesman Tony Vella as saying that the department is “monitoring” the situation but PC Vella had no more to say about what that meant. Many commentators are suggesting the video represents a fatal turn in the mayor’s career from which he may not be able to recover. .
