Former Metro board chair Jack Evans berated Metro’s board secretary and general counsel as he tried to prevent his ethics investigation from getting released, according to the Washington Post, which obtained hundreds of confidential documents on the investigation. 

The Post’s Robert McCartney reports that Evans repeatedly chastised—and even threatened to fire—the two employees for assisting the investigation and for helping to bring in an outside law firm to investigate him. That firm wrote a report earlier this year that said Evans committed multiple ethics violations in which he put his personal interests ahead of Metro’s, but the ethics committee agreed to cite him on only one offense.

The revelations from that report prompted the D.C. Council, on which Evans serves as the Ward 2 councilmember, to strip him of his long-held Finance Committee chairmanship and hire a law firm to investigate any conflicts of interest in July.

Metro board member Christian Dorsey called the reported actions “unethical and inappropriate.” Dorsey has not seen the documents, which were not released to the full board.

“The whole idea that an employee doing their job in good faith should suffer the wrath of having their job threatened is absolutely appalling,” Dorsey said. “There is a clear process and procedure if you ever have an issue with an employee.”

Evans’ lawyer told the Post he may have said things in the heat of the moment that he regretted. Evans could not have fired the secretary without full board support and had no authority over Metro’s general counsel.

The Post report is the latest fallout from the investigation into Evans’ behavior while serving as WMATA board chair. Evans is also facing a federal inquiry into accusations of pay-to-play, and federal agents conducted a raid on his Georgetown home in June.

Metro officials declined to comment on the latest report since it was a board issue.

Evans resigned from the Metro board at the end of June and WMATA board members say they’re ready to move past the scandal.

“For me, this is effectively a closed matter—he’s off the board,” Dorsey said. “Anything else that happens as a result of this is not my interest. The only lingering thing from the Metro perspective that I’m concerned with is to seek to implement reforms and improvements to the ethics committee process.”

New WMATA chair Paul Smedberg said the Post report highlights the need for reforms that the board will vote on next month.

Those include mandating written reports, involving the inspector general in an investigation, and having an odd number of members to avoid tie votes, among other ideas.

Greater Greater Washington, an urbanist website and advocacy group, also began a letter-writing campaign to remove Metro board members Corbett Price and David Horner, who voted to keep the investigation confidential.

“Tell Mayor Bowser, the D.C. Council, and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao that two members of the WMATA Board covering up for the corrupt actions of another is beyond the pale of acceptable behavior for our public officials,” a post on the site says. “Threatening public servants for doing their jobs is the stuff of crime novels, and not ‘business as usual’ for local government.”

Metro Rider Advisory Council Vice-Chair Andrew Kierig says he’s upset Evans treated employees that way and was more concerned about covering his tracks than advocating for transit.

“I can’t imagine ever doing that to someone … like it’s almost unfathomable,” Kierig said. “You have this board member who is focusing on protecting himself from what appears to be self-dealing. As someone who cares very deeply about the future of the system, it’s upsetting.”

Kierig, a car-free Virginia resident, said he can’t hold Evans accountable as he’s not on the board and he doesn’t live in Evans’ Ward 2. (Evans currently faces five challengers for his seat in the 2020 primaries.)

“But he was chair of the transportation agency that I depend on every day, and couldn’t live here without, so I do feel betrayed. I feel very let down, but I don’t live in D.C.,” he says. “So it’s in the hands of those folks over there.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.