A Superior Court judge has ordered that information censored on a police document that detailed an investigation into Mayor Rob Ford, his associates and activities should be released.

The information could be made public as early as this afternoon.

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Lawyers for the Star and other media outlets fought to overturn a sealing order on the nearly 500-page document after it was filed by police to get a search warrant in the so-called Project Brazen 2.

The Star argued that information about Ford was in the public interest and that the public has a constitutional right to scrutinize the information used by police to get a search warrant from a court.

On Oct. 30, Justice Ian Nordheimer ordered the document be released with nearly half of it censored pending further legal arguments.

The information that was made public revealed for the first time that police investigators were assigned to probe the existence of a video showing the mayor smoking what appears to be crack cocaine. It also showed several clandestine meetings between Ford and his friend Alexander Lisi, who was later arrested on drug charges.

Early last week, Ford admitted to reporters he had smoked crack cocaine about a year ago in a “drunken stupor.”

Last Friday, media lawyers and the Crown submitted arguments regarding redactions that censored information related to so-called “innocent third parties” — people who were not arrested as part of the investigation that saw Lisi arrested.

Crown attorney Tom Andreopoulos said the innocent party sections of the document did not form part of the “essential narrative” and did not advance the public interest. That information, Andreopoulos argued, is “highly sensitive personal information.”

Star lawyer Ryder Gilliland argued that all the information was put before a judge by the police to get the search warrant and keeping it secret would contradict the principle of open courts and would “do great harm” to public confidence in the administration of justice.

Nordheimer, in his decision released Wednesday morning, said the argument of the information being “non-essential narrative” is “problematic” because “if the narrative was truly non-essential, it ought not to have been included in the (document).”

“In my view, when it comes to the issue of public access to the material, it is not open to the Crown to attempt to maintain secrecy over portions of that material on the basis that it was unnecessary to the process in the first place,” Nordheimer’s decision says.

The information to be released includes interviews with Ford’s staff and what Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux, the lead investigator, said he learned after being assigned to investigate the video’s existence.

Some things will remain censored, such as personal identifiers like birth dates and phone numbers, Nordheimer ordered.

Nordheimer also ordered that information about Ford’s wife, “who apparently had some personal issues” during the police investigation, should remain censored.

There are two other areas that are subject to further legal arguments next week. They include information police got from wiretaps during Project Traveller — a guns and gangs sweep focused in the city’s northwest end — and information that Lisi’s lawyer has suggested may affect his client’s right to a fair trial.

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Lisi was recently arrested a second time on a charge of extortion for allegedly threatening two alleged gang members to recover the Ford video. On those charges, Lisi could face a jury trial.

Related:

More Project Brazen 2 documents released