In a 15-minute long tirade, Toronto Councillor Doug Ford came to the defence of his brother on Friday, denying that Mayor Rob Ford associates with alleged gang members or uses heroin.

“The mayor is not hanging out with gang members, I can assure that, 100 per cent,” Doug Ford told reporters at City Hall, slamming the media and the mayor’s opponents.

He also said his brother doesn’t use heroin.

“The mayor has not been charged … He’s apologized very clearly, he’s moving on.”

Court documents released earlier this week allege that Rob Ford may have tried to to buy the alleged video of himself smoking crack cocaine two months before news of the video first broke. The documents also contain allegations from alleged gang members that the mayor had shown interest in buying drugs from them, and that the mayor may have used heroin.

Doug Ford said the mayor is of “healthy mind,” working out two hours a day. He also suggested that if his brother “stayed the course,” and dropped “60 or 70 pounds,” he would win re-election next October.

Ford also launched into a diatribe against the media, accusing reporters of practicing “Stalin-era Pravda journalism.”

Pravda was a political newspaper in Russia during the communist era, and was highly supportive of the communist regime.

“I’ll tell you what I hear on the street, people are getting sick and tired of listening to the media…you’re beating a dead horse here,” Ford said.

Ford added that the media has had it out for his brother ever since the mayor announced he was gunning for the city’s top job. He said the media has already decided the mayor is guilty of wrongdoing.

“If there was a rope here, you (the media) would bring him out to the middle of the square and hang him up,” Ford said. “But the people don’t feel that way.”

Ford explained that his brother isn’t speaking to the media because the mayor is not at liberty to talk about an issue before the courts.

The allegations against the mayor are part of court documents related to drug and extortion charges against the mayor’s friend and former driver, Alexander Lisi.

Doug Ford also suggested that there is an orchestrated conspiracy against his brother, though he didn’t say who exactly is behind it.

“This is a clear, clear agenda, a very well organized agenda, from some of our competitors. And in my opinion they don’t want Rob here,” Ford said.

He also suggested that the way the court documents have been released is highly suspicious.

“What are they going to release next,” he said. “It feeds you guys [the media]. It calms down for a week, then they release something, and it builds it up again.”

He once again accused Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair of being “very political” and having an “agenda” to get rid of his brother.

Ford, who said that the mayor plans to attend the funeral of a Toronto police officer who died last week in a car accident, said the mayor has more support among frontline officers than Blair does.

During a winter-preparedness and snow removal announcement Friday, Rob Ford took his own jab at reporters. While sitting in a large snow plow, the laughing mayor suggested he wouldn’t mind plowing over reporters.

“Tell the media to stand just a little ahead there,” he said to the cameras.

The mayor refused to answer questions about the latest allegations.