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“Lisi was heard to be brokering the return of a cellular phone stolen from an associate of his, with a payment of marihuana,” the document states. Although the document does not name the associate, it was allegedly Mayor Ford.

In June, after rounding up dozens of suspected gang members in the Project Traveller sweep, police began conducting surveillance on Lisi and discovered his connection to Mr. Bahrami’s dry cleaning business in Etobicoke. Investigators allege the pair, both charged with drug trafficking, were working together to sell marijuana out of the dry cleaners.

Lisi — who has multiple previous convictions dating back to 2001, including assault and threatening death — has been described by Mayor Ford as a “good guy” who is on the “straight and narrow.” The two are friends, and Lisi, who was angling for a job with the city of Toronto, sometimes drove the mayor around in his Range Rover.

Mayor Ford also wrote a character reference this past June when Lisi was being sentenced for threatening to kill a former girlfriend, touting the accused’s “tact and diplomacy” and lauding him as “an exemplary member of my campaign team.”

One of Lisi’s neighbours said she frequently saw Mayor Ford stop by; he parked at the curb and interacted with Lisi through the window of the car, neighbour Carol Peck said. A report in the Toronto Star said Lisi made “aggressive attempts” to retrieve the alleged crack video after the story broke in May.

In one of his only public responses to the ongoing scandal, Mayor Ford has said he does not smoke crack cocaine, and “I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist.” He has repeatedly declined to comment on Brazen 2 or on the specifics of the Lisi case, saying the matter was “before the courts.”

Faced Wednesday with the imminent release of the ITO, Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother, said only: “I am not even paying attention to all that… Rob is the most honest politician in the country.”

National Post