Former D.C. councilmember Michael A. Brown, who's serving a three-year prison term on a bribery conviction, is continuing to fight charges by the city's ethics board.
A lawyer for Brown has filed documents arguing that D.C.'s ethics rules "do not cover the circumstances of an FBI sting operation," the Washington Post reports.
Brown previously admitted to accepting $55,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents. The agents posed as businessmen who wanted help getting city contracts.
He was sentenced in May to 39 months in prison and reported to a federal prison in Alabama last month. Prosecutors had asked for a prison term of 43 months, the most he could get under the terms of a plea bargain he struck last year.
Brown's sentence did not include any fines, but he could be fined up to $165,000 by the ethics board.
His sister, Tracey Brown, is representing him in the ethics case and has argued that fines are inappropriate in part because the cash Brown received was "fully repaid."
