Gawker raises $200K to buy video of Toronto mayor allegedly smoking crack
Gawker’s Indiegogo campaign originally featured a photo purported to show Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, center, and Anthony Smith, who was gunned down in Toronto in March.
(Credit: Indiegogo)
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been having a lousy week, and it may have gotten much worse.
Gawker’s “Crackstarter” campaign on Indiegogo has reached its goal of raising $200,000 to buy a drug dealer’s video allegedly showing Ford smoking crack cocaine and post it online.
The gossip Web site’s John Cook and journalists from The Toronto Star say they have seen footage in which Ford is smoking crack with drug dealers.
Cook, who has described how he met the drug dealers in Toronto and viewed the smartphone video, clearly thinks it’s in the public interest — and Gawker’s — to pay the crack users.
Ford has repeatedly denied the allegation, saying, “I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist.”