The D.C. Council unanimously voted Tuesday morning to take Sulaimon Brown, and others, to court to force them to testify.
There was no discussion of the emergency measure, which sends to the council’s general counsel to D.C. Superior Court to ask for a court order requiring Brown, Cherita Whitting and Peyton Brooks to testify. Brown and Whitting were scheduled to testify at the fourth installment of council hearings looking into the hiring practice of the Vince Gray administration.
Brown says he never got the subpoena and Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh says he signed for it when it was delivered by certified mail. Whitting just didn’t show.
The committee has also decided to take Peyton Brooks to court over his statement that he’d plead the Fifth to any and all questions the council puts to him. The committee says Brooks isn’t likely to be incriminating himself when answering some questions.
If a superior court judge issues an order requiring them to testify, and they don’t, they can be held in contempt of court, Cheh said.
Brown claims Gray promised him a job to stay on the campaign trail last summer and keep up his verbal attacks on then-Mayor Adrian Fenty. He also says Brooks’ father, Gray for Mayor campaign worker Howard Brooks, passed him cash-stuffed envelopes for the same reason. Peyton Brooks was later hired by the Gray administration, just like Brown and Whitting — who didn’t mark down a felony conviction on her job application.
