[Flash Walken]

Fedeli’s announcement come after a brief audio recording of Brown during a conference call with the party caucus the night the allegations became public, was leaked online.

CTV News Toronto obtained an audio recording of Brown informing members of caucus that he was resigning as leader of the Progressive Conservative party.

The recording was obtained on Friday morning, one day after Global News aired an interview with Brown in which he appeared to suggest that he never actually resigned as party leader.

In that interview, Brown contended that a resignation letter was sent out on his behalf “without” his permission and that he didn’t know what he “would have done the next day.”

“The resignation was actually sent out on my behalf without my permission at the time,” Brown said.

Brown told Global News that “he understood that they (his staff) were drafting a copy of the resignation” but he said that he was “shocked” when he “found out it was sent out without an opportunity to see it.”

The conference call on Jan. 24 happened hours after CTV News published a story containing allegations of sexual misconduct. In the audio obtained, Brown is heard referring to the allegations as “character assassination” but he goes on to state that he doesn’t “want any of us set back on our mission to defeat Kathleen Wynne.”

He then calmly offers his resignation to caucus.

“When you work 20 hours a day like I do on defeating this government I would never want to be an obstacle to you defeating this government and I have asked (Director of Communications) Rebecca (Thompson) to prepare a statement that I will resign and I have asked her to figure out at what point tomorrow that is best,” Brown said in the conference call. “She has drafted a statement while you were on the call and she can read it to you if you want to hear what we have put together so far.”

Brown’s resignation statement was later posted to the Ontario PC party website just before 1:30 a.m.

There were two reports published on Thursday citing sources who said that Brown believes he never actually resigned as leader of the PC party, though he did take to Twitter to distance himself from the reports.

“I appreciate the enthusiasm but I did not authorize this. I am solely focused on clearing my name, not technicalities,” he said.

Brown wouldn’t respond to questions from reporters about the resignation who asked him to clarify the contradicting information.

He would only say he would answer all questions at an event tomorrow. Details of that event have not yet been made public.

https://www.cp24.com/news/brown-ente...ions-1.3806525