The pressure of Crackgate was mounting for all concerned. In mid-August, both the Star and The Globe and Mail ran exposes about the mysterious Alexander Lisi, Rob Ford's homie from the old neighbourhood, detailing his criminal history and alleging that he was the mayor's point man in aggressively trying to get hold of the crack video.

Ford steadfastly stood by his buddy, telling the Toronto Sun that Lisi was a "great guy and he is straight as an arrow."

Toronto Police were also being bombarded with questions. The media demanded to know if the city's chief magistrate was under investigation. Etobicoke residents wanted to know why a noisy plane was buzzing their neighbourhood. And the mayor had his staff call headquarters to find out who owned the car he had seen tailing him.

"Mayor Ford is utilizing his position and the powers of the Office of the Mayor, to obtain information not available to regular citizens," complained investigators in a court document.

Phone records, tracking devices, plane and mobile surveillance, even sifting through his garbage--and all Project Brazen 2 had uncovered so far was evidence of the mayor receiving

mysterious packages from Lisi and sharing booze with him in the woods like some errant high school kid.

Yet investigators never did stop Ford to check out what was in those packages. They never pulled over his Escalade, even after court documents alleged officers watched the mayor consume alcohol at his favourite Steak Queen hangout with Lisi and then get behind the wheel. He appeared, the police said, to be "under the influence of alcohol and or drug but not to the state of impairment."

Now, how could they possibly know that from spying on him from afar? Were detectives still hoping they could catch him in something more?

But time was running out with nothing but empty vodka bottles to show for their effort. By the end of August, the order came down to arrest Lisi on drug charges. But a domestic disturbance at the Ford household would get in the way.

At 6:51 p.m. on Aug. 27, police say they were dispatched to the mayor's Etobicoke home for a domestic assault. A flurry of calls then followed between a Ford family business cellphone, Lisi's cell and that of Ford's former logistics director David Price. According to court documents, Lisi rushed to the aid of his friend, and failed to arrive at what was supposed to be a drug squad takedown at Richview Cleaners.

The mayor left his unhappy marital home and checked into the Grand Hotel on Jarvis St. in the heart of what the Star would label "crack central." Police later tracked Lisi's Range Rover to that address as well. The two couldn't seem to be apart for very long.

A few nights later, Ford headed to Sunnybrook Park for a GTA Conservative barbecue with Stephen Harper. Instagram photos later published by NOW Magazine showed an increasingly hammered mayor as the evening wore on--his eyes bloodshot, his cheeks ruddy.

How the mighty had fallen. Ford was once heralded as the Conservative Moses who was going to deliver his city nation to Stephen Harper and the feds. But that was several scandals ago. With his increasingly embarrassing behaviour, the prime

minister's staff wisely ensured Harper never crossed paths with Ford that night.

The following day, on the heels of confessions by other leaders, the mayor gleefully admitted to reporters that he had smoked "a lot" of marijuana in his time.

That came as no surprise.

* * *

The drug takedown of the mayor's good friend "Sandro" Lisi was reset for Oct. 1 at Richview Cleaners.

Jamshid Bahrami, a medical marijuana user, operated his mom's Rexdale dry-cleaning business as a base, police allege, for drug sales. According to their surveillance records filed with the court, Lisi was a frequent visitor who would later leave with pizza boxes in hand.

"Richview Cleaners only specializes in dry-cleaning and is not in the food

industry," police noted wryly in their information to obtain a search warrant.

That afternoon an undercover officer reported receiving a call from Bahrami that "Sandro" had dropped off some "shirts" for him to see.

When the undercover officer arrived at the strip mall at Eglinton Ave. and Wincott Dr., he was taken into the washroom and shown several bags of marijuana and told "Sandro" wanted $1,000 for the half pound of pot, police allege.

The officer offered $800. After Bahrami made a phone call, he said there was "too much heat" for the seller to negotiate in person, according to police documents. Instead, Bahrami and the undercover officer settled on "nine shirts" and the cop put $900 in an envelope and signed it.

A short time later, Lisi, 35, was arrested at Richview Cleaners, allegedly with $900 in his pant pocket. He was charged with possession and trafficking of marijuana, conspiracy to commit an indictable offence and possession of the proceeds of crime.

The exhaustive and expensive Project Brazen 2 investigation had managed to yield Lisi and Bahrami on minor pot charges.

But it did land the mayor back on the front page yet again: His best pal, sometime driver and self-appointed bodyguard now stood charged with drug trafficking.

"I'm surprised, I'm actually shocked," Ford told reporters on Oct. 2 at the same Esso gas station where police had watched Lisi surreptitiously deposit a package in the mayor's Escalade. "Like I've said, he's straight and narrow. I've never once seen the guy drink, I've never once seen him do drugs, so I'm surprised.

"He's a friend. He's a good guy. And I don't throw my friends under the bus."

Could he really not see the problem? Had no one ever taught him the old adage of being judged by the company you keep? The mayor claimed a convicted criminal as his friend--what favours was he willing to give him and his associates?

At least one favour soon became clear.

We learned that when Lisi was facing sentencing last June for threatening to kill his girlfriend--a conviction he's appealing-- the mayor used City of Toronto letterhead to pen him a character reference letter.

Lisi was looking for another favour as well. According to his pre-sentence report, he aspired to "work for the City of Toronto with the endorsement of his 'close friend,'Mayor Rob Ford."

After a media application, Justice Jane Kelly agreed to release the damning court documents on Oct. 22: "He was an exemplary member of my (2010) campaign team, where he displayed exceptional leadership skills and worked hard both in and out of the campaign office," Ford wrote in the June 4 reference letter.

"Mr. Lisi has demonstrated ... that he has a great work ethic and has always shown tact and diplomacy. I have known him for several years, and he has always conducted himself in a courteous and polite manner."

The letter, actually written at Ford's request by former staffer Kia Nejatian, obviously helped do the trick. Lisi, despite a previous domestic assault conviction, received a suspended sentence and probation for threatening to kill his girlfriend.

Once again, people wondered why the mayor of Toronto was so close to a man with such an odious past. And once again, Ford wasn't answering.

"You know what, if you guys want to ask me about the letters, that's the end of it. It's over," he said storming out of a press conference. "Because, I've answered it, that's it ... See ya, done. Forget it."

* * *

Oct. 25 marked the third anniversary of Ford's election as mayor and the walls were closing in.

His loyal lieutenant and alleged drug supplier was out on bail on trafficking charges, a judge was mulling a media request to release a 500-page police document used to obtain a search warrant on Lisi's home and car, city councillors were demanding he step down and reporters were camped outside his office door.

So what did Ford do?

He decorated his office for Hallowe'en and then the street fighter launched an offensive, crowing about his accomplishments and predicting another victory on Oct. 27, 2014.

"I think a lot of the media outlets, well two in particular, are out to get me off my game," he said. "It's not working. I'm doing what I was elected to do: save taxpayers' money and cut the waste at City Hall."

Ford repeated the same bold predictions as he gave reporters a tour of his haunted office. "It's going to be a bloodbath, they're coming after me and I'm sure they're going to bring up everything," Ford predicted. "I'm not worried about anything."

He should have been.

On Oct. 29, secreted away in a Toronto Police intelligence building, forensic computer technicians were finally able to recover a deleted digital file on a hard drive seized during Project Traveller four months before.

* * *

Time was ticking toward the inevitable. For weeks, a consortium of media lawyers had been in court before eminent Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer to press for access to the ITO-- the information police used to obtain search warrants during Project Brazen 2.The expectation was that those pages would shed light on the strange relationship between the mayor and an accused drug dealer.

On Oct. 30, the media won their battle and Nordheimer ordered the release the next day of a censored version of the massive court document.

With anticipation at a frenzied pitch, the rainy morning of Hallowe'en dawned with dozens of reporters and photographers converged on the mayor's front lawn. "Are you the focus of this drug investigation?" reporters shouted.

"Can you get off my driveway please?" Ford angrily repeated, as he tried to make his way toward his Cadillac Escalade with his arms heavy with dry cleaning. That whining demand reached a crescendo when he shoved Sun photographer Craig Robertson and snarled, "What don't you understand? Get off the property, partner" before speeding away.

At 10:20 a.m., the ITO was released. It would be the first of several installments that offered an unprecedented window into the bizarre underworld of our mayor, with each shocking chapter filled with untested allegations of gangsters, booze and drugs.

While many of its 500 pages were blacked out, those made available still painted a shocking picture. What had long been suspected was true: The man elected to head Canada's largest city was indeed caught up in an undercover drug investigation. And his social circle of lowlifes and alleged criminals had their seamy tentacles insinuating themselves right into the city's highest office.

Giddy reporters scrambled that morning to sift through hundreds of released pages. In photos and words yet to be tested in court, police detailed the hundreds of phone calls and meetings between Ford and Lisi and their many suspicious handoffs in gas stations, school parking lots and wooded parks. When the mayor was so often AWOL from City Hall and the business of running this city, the ITO showed him being observed by police hanging out with a suspected drug dealer.

The salacious details included photos of the mayor urinating in public and pathetic descriptions of him looking "dishevelled, a large sweat stain circling his stomach, sweating profusely from his forehead" after drinking with Lisi over a lunch at the Steak Queen-- the same diner that would become famous months later for his Jamaican Patois rant against Police Chief Bill Blair.

There were complaints by Ford's former staff to police that Lisi "would drive the mayor around to 'hot spots' and facilitate getting drugs for mayor."

And there was a detailing of the flurry of phone calls made by Lisi after news broke of the alleged crack video in May, including many to Fabio Basso--who was injured in a home invasion a few days later at his infamous 15 Windsor Rd. address --and to Mohamed Siad, who police alleged is "one of the people trying to sell Mayor Ford crack video."

It was an overwhelming banquet for journalists. But it was about to get even better.

* * *

There are certain defining events where you know you will look back and remember exactly what you were doing when the news broke. The jaw-dropping press conference held by the Toronto Police chief was one of those moments.

Called for 11:30 a.m. at headquarters, the expectation was that Blair wanted to comment on that morning's partial release of the ITO. Instead, he was about to drop a bomb, generating aftershocks which still reverberate to this day.

"As a result of the evidence that was seized on June 13 at the conclusion of Project Traveller," the chief began, "a number of electronic devices, computers, telephones and hard drives were seized and all of the devices that have been seized have been subject to forensic review and examination by members of the Toronto Police Service intelligence unit computer technology section."

Reporters exchanged looks of surprise. Was Blair really about to announce the unthinkable?

He was indeed.

"I have been advised that we are now in possession of a recovered digital video file relevant to the investigations that have been conducted," he said solemnly. "The mayor does appear in that video."

Erased on a hard drive seized during Project Traveller, the police techies had managed to resurrect a digital file copy of the notorious crack video. The smoking gun had risen from the dead.

After months of dogged denials, he had been caught in his bald-faced lie. This wasn't a left-wing media conspiracy. This wasn't a fabricated vendetta by the Toronto Star. It was all true.

"I think as a citizen of Toronto, I'm disappointed," the chief said.

With the video now in hand, Blair also announced that Ford's good friend was now facing an extortion charge in addition to his drug charges. As the information would allege: "(Lisi) placed several threatening/extorting phone calls to individuals he felt may be in possession of the video recording. The accused insinuated that there would be consequences for the failure to return the video recording depicting the video images of the mayor."

Lisi's alleged victims were video vendors Liban Siyad and Mohamed Siad.

Reached on his cellphone, Ford had just a few words for the Sun's Joe Warmington: "This is nuts."

* * *

The chief's stunning announcement raced around the world. As Allison Jones at Canadian Press would tweet, "At the beginning of the day, I never would have thought the Lisi documents would be the secondary story. So goes the wild world of news."

At the Toronto Sun, Publisher Mike Power and Editor-in-Chief Wendy Metcalfe decided to issue the paper's first afternoon "bulldog" edition since 9/11 with the headline Nightmayor on Ford Street. While on the second floor of City Hall, the media waited at the centre of the storm.

Surely, now would be the time for the mayor to throw himself on the mercy of the city, confess his sins and check himself into rehab. Surely this was finally the scandal he couldn't bulldoze his way through.

Three hours later, Ford finally emerged from his haunted house of a bunker to say--absolutely nothing.

"I wish I could come out and defend myself, unfortunately I can't because it is before the court and that's all I can say right now," he said during his minute-long press conference.

After months of lies and denials, he was as bombastic, as oblivious as ever.

"I have no reason to resign," Ford insisted. "I'm going to go back and return my phone calls, I'm going to be out doing what the people elected me to do and that's save taxpayers'money and run a great government."