Update, 5 p.m.: The D.C. Council voted 12-1 in favor of authorizing the legislative body to go to Superior Court to ask that the investigators’ subpoenas be enforced. The sole no vote was Jack Evans.

Original: A D.C. Council investigation into allegations of self-dealing by Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans has been delayed by at least a month because several key people subpoenaed have so far refused to comply, according to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.

Mendelson plans to ask the full Council on Tuesday if he can take the matter to court in order to force them to appear.

“My view is that the Council needs to authorize enforcement of all these subpoenas,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to be hauled into court tomorrow, but it does mean that the Council’s taking the next step so that anybody who’s not cooperating promptly will have enforcement taken against them.”

The Council authorized the investigation into Evans in July, asking law firm O’Melveny & Myers to dig into any real or perceived conflicts of interest involving Evans since 2014. The Council’s action was prompted by growing revelations that Evans, the Council’s longest-serving member, may have used his public office for private gain. Allegations against the councilmember include using the Council to benefit private clients of his law firm as well as his other outside employer, a lobbying group.

‘Disturbed’ By Lack Of Cooperation

An investigation earlier this year by the Metro board’s ethics committee found that Evans had violated the transit agency’s code of ethics by not disclosing that one of his clients had been vying for a Metro contract while he served as the board’s chair. (He resigned from the board at the end of his term in late June.) Evans is also under investigation by a federal grand jury; FBI agents searched his home in June.

The Council’s investigation was slated to be complete by mid-September. Mendelson said that because some of Evans’ former clients refused to comply with investigators’ subpoenas for interviews, the report would be delayed until at least mid-October.

“I’m quite disturbed at the lack of cooperation,” he said.

Mendelson said only two people have been interviewed so far, one of them being Evans, who he said has spoken to investigators twice. He declined to identify the second person, or name those who were not complying. WAMU reached out to three of them—developers Willco, Eastbanc, and Colonial Parking—and all either declined to comment or were not immediately available to answer questions.

“The issue here is that the Council is trying to get an investigation complete,” said Mendelson. “There is a great deal of public unhappiness with regard to Mr. Evans’ conduct and the investigation needs to be completed now. We have been frustrated in that. The fault here is the interviewees who are not coming in to be interviewed.”

Potential Council Actions

If the Council agrees on Tuesday, Mendelson will be allowed to go to Superior Court to ask that the investigators’ subpoenas be enforced.

The Council Chairman also said that he plans on creating an ad hoc committee in the coming weeks, which will be charged with taking the law firm’s investigation and determining what — if any — sanctions Evans should face if he’s found to have violated the Council’s code of conduct. In 2013, a similar committee recommended that then-Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry be censured over revelations that he took money from contractors seeking business with the city.

In July, Evans was stripped of his chairmanship of the Council’s powerful finance committee, though he did not lose his membership on other committees and still retains the ability to vote on legislation making its way through the Council. Before he lost his leadership position, Evans asked his colleagues to let the legal process run its course before taking any action against him, but he also refused to answer any questions about the potential conflicts of interest he faced.

Political Consequences

In August, Evans was fined $20,000 by the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability for using government resources and aiming to parlay his Council influence into work with local law firms.

Other than the various investigations, Evans is also navigating possible political consequences. He already has five announced challengers for the 2020 Democratic primary, and organizers of an effort to recall him from office say they are more than halfway to their goal of collecting 5, 500 signatures from Ward 2 voters to put the measure on the ballot.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.