The team that directed hiring in the Vincent Gray administration often placed priority on prospective employees who had helped raise cash for Gray’s campaign, had “political capital” or were otherwise well connected, internal emails reveal. Among them was Sulaimon Brown, the formal mayoral candidate who was hired into a $110,000-a-year job by the Gray administration in late January only to be fired a month later when questions were raised about his past. Brown then accused Gray of promising him a job in exchange for his campaign trail attacks against then-Mayor Adrian Fenty. Gray’s transition team was checking Brown’s background in preparation for hiring him less than a week after Gray was sworn in, according to emails a D.C. Council committee requested as part of its investigation into the administration’s hiring practices.

“We are working on Leon Swain and Sulamon Brown [sic],” Ken Cummins wrote to Lorraine Green on Jan. 7, bunching Brown with taxi commissioner Swain. Cummins was hired to vet candidates for political appointments. Green was the Gray for Mayor chairwoman and has been accused of passing Brown cash-stuffed envelopes last summer.