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D.C. Council to hold hearing on expelling Jack Evans over ethics violations D.C. Council member Jack Evans to resign over ethics violations; was city’s longest-serving lawmaker
(about 8 hours later)
D.C. Council member Jack Evans will have a chance Tuesday to publicly argue that he deserves to stay in office, after his colleagues decided to remove him in light of repeated ethics violations. Longtime D.C. Council member Jack Evans announced Tuesday that he will resign Jan. 17, ending a 29-year political career that helped revive a foundering city but in the end was deeply tainted by ethics violations.
The Ward 2 Democrat has not said whether he or his attorney will address the council at the expulsion hearing, which is a precursor to a formal expulsion vote scheduled for Jan. 21. Evans’s colleagues took a preliminary vote in December to expel him, and had scheduled a 1 p.m. hearing Tuesday to summarize the case against him and offer him an opportunity to speak before a final expulsion vote on Jan. 21.
Regardless of whether he testifies, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who oversaw the council’s internal probe of Evans, is set to summarize what the investigation found and why council members voted unanimously last month to recommend expulsion. Members will also have an opportunity to make statements on why they believe that Evans should be removed. Instead, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said, he received Evans’s brief resignation letter about 12:55 p.m.
Evans’s ouster would bring an ignominious end to a nearly three-decade political career. An investigation commissioned by the council last year found that he violated ethics rules when he used his office to assist companies that paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars for consulting services. “I believe Washington D.C. to be the pride of the nation, and I am proud of the contributions I have made in helping to create a vibrant city,” Evans (D) wrote in the letter, which did not mention his ethics troubles. “It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the District of Columbia and residents of Ward 2.”
Evans, his spokesman and his attorney did not return calls Monday for comment. Mendelson (D), who had been urging Evans to resign, then cancelled the afternoon hearing.
“This is the right decision that Mr. Evans has made,” the chairman said. “This is important as a step in restoring the integrity of this institution and the trust of the public.”
Evans started the day as if it was a routine Tuesday at the Wilson Building. He stayed silent during a council breakfast, leaving his waffle mostly uneaten and remaining mostly stone-faced as his colleagues cracked jokes about plans for gaming regulations .
He attended the morning legislative meeting, speaking privately to a staffer and to Mendelson between votes on bills and appointments. At its conclusion, he left the dais and walked down the stairs to his first-floor office, ignoring questions from reporters.
He left the building at 1:10 p.m. His spokesman, Joe Florio, said Evans had no additional statement planned.
Veteran D.C. journalist Tom Sherwood was the first to report that Evans would resign.
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Evans, first elected in 1991 to represent a swath of downtown and western D.C. neighborhoods including Foggy Bottom, Georgetown and Dupont Circle, was a titan of D.C. politics who loomed large in civic life and made several unsuccessful runs for mayor.
A steadfast ally of business interests, he championed the revival of downtown, construction of Nationals Park and attempts to bring the Redskins back to the District. But his close ties to business eventually proved to be his undoing, as his outside employment with law firms and as a consultant to prominent companies with interests before city government came under scrutiny.
Evans struggled to explain what he did for $400,000 in consultingEvans struggled to explain what he did for $400,000 in consulting
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said he asked Evans to share his plans over the weekend but did not know whether Evans would speak. In 2018, the local news website District Dig reported that the executive of a digital sign company offered Evans’s son an internship before the lawmaker proposed legislation to make the company’s business plan possible. Ethics investigators started scrutinizing his ties with the company, and federal authorities also launched investigations of his business dealings., though he has not been charged with a crime.
Expulsion requires 11 votes, meaning two members would have to change their minds by Jan. 21 to save Evans’s job. Mendelson, who has urged Evans to resign rather than be removed, said he “had no reason to believe” that any lawmakers have wavered on supporting expulsion. Then, The Washington Post reported that Evans solicited employment from local law firms using government email accounts, touting his influence and connections as a member of the council and chairman of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board as a reason to hire him.
Evans previously declined to testify under oath in response to the ethics probe. Shortly after the council’s expulsion vote, he said the failure of an effort to gather enough signatures to remove him from office showed that “the voters in Ward 2 do not want me to leave.” That report prompted the transit agency to launch an internal investigation and the council to reprimand Evans. The ethics board later fined Evans $20,000.
The removal of Evans would mark the culmination of nearly two years of scandals that have diminished the influence and stature of the District’s longest-serving lawmaker. Evans falsely said that the transit agency’s cleared him of wrongdoing, and stepped down from the board after The Post revealed that investigators found he “knowingly” violated ethics rules to help friends and consulting clients.
Evans stepped down from the board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority last summer after an investigation there found ethics violations. The D.C. ethics board also fined Evans $20,000 for using government email and touting his public office while trying to land work at local law firms. The next day, FBI agents searched his home.
Federal prosecutors are investigating Evans, and FBI agents searched his home in June, but he has not been charged with a crime. Federal authorities have not commented on their probe. Under enormous pressure, the council stripped Evans of a powerful committee chairmanship and launched its own investigation, which found in November that Evans violated ethics rules when he used his office to assist companies that paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars for consulting services.
Evans has considered running for another term this year even if he is expelled or resigns, according to two people who spoke to him before the holidays and described those private conversations on the condition of anonymity. The investigation found that Evans had received $400,000 in consulting payments from prominent local businesses that he failed to disclose, including from EagleBank, developers and a software contractor.
He has not filed for reelection; the deadline is in March. Evans struggled to explain what consulting services he provided, and investigators identified numerous instances where he voted on legislation and contacted city agencies to assist his clients while they were paying him. Evans and his lawyers defended his conduct, saying he was providing routine constituent services he would offer to any business or person.
Most of the council called for his resignation, but Evans refused. The next month, all of his colleagues voted to recommend his expulsion.
Evans never publicly responded to the expulsion vote, but said the failure of an effort to gather enough recall signatures to remove him from office showed that “the voters in Ward 2 do not want me to leave.”
Evans had been considering running for another term this year even if he was expelled or resigned, according to two people who spoke to him before the holidays and described those private conversations on the condition of anonymity.
His resignation letter did not address that possibility. He has not filed for reelection; the deadline is in March.
Six other candidates have filed to compete for the Ward 2 council seat in the June Democratic primary, which is tantamount to the general election in a deep-blue city.Six other candidates have filed to compete for the Ward 2 council seat in the June Democratic primary, which is tantamount to the general election in a deep-blue city.
If Evans is expelled, the D.C. election board would schedule a special election to fill his seat for the rest of the current term. The D.C. election board must schedule a special election to fill the Ward 2 seat for the rest of Evans’s term.
Evans’s lawyers have argued that he should not be expelled during an election year and that removal would disenfranchise voters in Ward 2, which covers downtown, Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle and Georgetown. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who oversaw the council’s internal investigation of Evans, said his resignation was no surprise because he did not want to be the first council member expelled in D.C. history.
Mendelson said he and other at-large members would pick up constituent services for Ward 2 residents if Evans is removed from office. He also said he would keep Evans’s employees on the government payroll for several months to give them time to find new jobs. “Jack’s had an extraordinary career and has done many fine things, but he also had extraordinary ethical lapses,” Cheh said. “He didn’t just slightly tip-toe over the line. He ran well past the line, and apparently for a long period of time. It is nevertheless a sad day for him, and a sad day for the council, that it had to come to this.”
“Constituents will not be ignored, they will not be forsaken,” Mendelson said. This is a developing story that will be updated throughout the day.
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