It should have been clear from the outset that it wasn’t going to be any normal D.C. Council hearing. The star witness, after all, refused to take off the sunglasses he was wearing.

And such began the five-hour drama that was the much-anticipated arrival of former mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown to the Council committee investigating the Gray administration’s hiring practices — which had, at one point, netted Brown a high-paying job. After having dodged repeated requests that he testify, Brown’s court-ordered appearance may not have shed much new light on many of the allegations that have been raised, but it did provide plenty of tension and theatrics that may well go down in local political lore.

After a brief opening statement, Brown settled in to flesh out claims that Gray campaign officials had paid him to attack Mayor Adrian Fenty during the bruising 2010 mayoral contest and that he had been rewarded with a $110,000-a-year job at the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance thereafter.

For a man who openly declared that Gray was a “crook” before the hearing, Brown was never particularly nice or cooperative about answering questions from councilmembers looking into the very substance of what he alleged. Whether seeming evasive or annoyed, Brown snapped at the councilmembers, refused to answer questions until threatened with court orders to do so and seemed to make up courtroom-like procedural excuses as he went along. (He labelled papers he brought with him as “Exhibit 1” and “Exhibit 2,” and at one point asked to strike something he said from the record.)

He accused Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who was chairing the hearing, of being a shill for Gray, while claiming that Councilmember David Catania (I-At Large) had no right to ask questions of him. He called the questioning “irritating” and an “abuse of power,” and repeatedly called Catania “delusional” and even a “racist.” Towards the end of the hearing, he engaged Councilmember Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) in a particularly amusing back-and-forth, which ended with Barry stating, “you’re out of your goddamned mind.” And no, that wasn’t the only time an expletive was dropped during the hearing.

But for all the drama, Brown didn’t add much new content to an investigation that has spanned multiple hearings. He repeated the claim that Gray campaign chair Lorraine Green and campaign worker Howard Brooks had given him cash and cashiers’ checks to remain on the attack against Fenty, but bristled when multiple councilmembers pointed out that he likely violated campaign finance rules himself by using cash for personal use and not listing contributions on his campaign finance reports. He did directly implicate Gray, though, saying that the Mayor directed Brooks to give him an envelope full of money after a Ward 4 mayoral forum last summer.

As for the job he eventually received, Brown argued that he was fired for political reasons and that other witnesses had perjured themselves when they said that he had been let go after complaints of sexual harassment and poor job performance surfaced. (He even flashed his former D.C. government ID, which Cheh informed him should have been turned in after he left his government job. It was eventually taken from him at the end of the hearing by security.)

For as much as Brown said, though, he had little with him that served as definitive proof. And what little evidence he did have — a few copies of money orders, his notes — he initially refused to make available to the committee, and much of what he produced, he read off of his phone. The lack of a compelling narrative or evidence simply wasn’t helped by the fact that Brown kept his sunglasses on, frequently remained cross-armed, attempted to boss the proceedings and couldn’t seem to find one councilmember that he didn’t try to speak down to.

Ultimately, Catania may have narrowed the hearing down to what may define this months-long scandal — the fact that Brown got a job at all in the Gray administration. That Brown was as inconsistent, evasive and argumentative as he was yesterday certainly made him look less credible, but it didn’t diminish the fact that Gray’s former chief of staff worked to get him a job or that Gray’s campaign officials somehow saw him as of enough of a threat to merit engaging him.

It’s not clear that the Council will be able to draw much of a definitive conclusion from all the hearings, but it’s still digging — Brown was served with an expanded subpoena yesterday that calls for more documents he claims to have, and Cheh left open the possibility of future hearings. The main question now seems to be whether the U.S. Attorney or FBI will be able to verify any payments to Brown and make enough of a case of them to go after Gray campaign officials.

But until that happens, the most we’ll have from Brown is yesterday’s theatrics.

For more on the hearing: Marc Fisher, Harry Jaffe, City Paper, WaPo, WAMU, Examiner, WTTG.