DC City Council at-large council member hopeful facing forgery allegations

Questions have been raised about thousands of signatures gathered on a petition to run for DC City Council as At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman is challenging the signatures with the board of elections, claiming many of them were forged.

Silverman told the board that S. Kathryn Allen, a woman who wants to run against her, turned in thousands of fraudulent signatures in her petition to be on the ballot. If the complaint holds, Allen would be barred from being on the ballot.

Bryan Weaver said his fraudulent signature was among the signatures submitted.

"Somebody sent it to me last night, just sent me an email saying, 'Hey did you sign this?' I took a look at it and obviously was not my signature. It was on a date when I was out of the country with a group of DCPS students and so I knew it was no way it could be mine and I then I ended up reading another article that this was something going on right now in a couple of different campaigns, that there were a lot of forgeries being used in the petition gathering," Weaver, a former ANC commissioner, said.

Weaver tweeted out a picture on Monday of the petition with his forged signature along with a photo of himself with the students in Guatemala. Weaver said the forged petition was dated July 21, when he was out of the country.

Back on Aug. 10, Traci Hughes dropped out of her campaign for city council when she discovered what she said were thousands of fraudulent signatures gathered for her by a company called Strategies for Change.

Hughes had previously worked as a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department and the DC Office of Open Government, but she said the fraudulent signatures on the petitions returned to her sank her campaign.

That same company was hired by Allen to gather signatures for her campaign. Weaver said the petition that contained his forged signature was for Allen's campaign. The website for Allen's campaign said she has an office on 30th Street in Georgetown but when FOX 5 went to the location to ask for comment, the building tenants said they'd never heard of Allen and that she did not have an office there. FOX 5 has attempted to reach out to Allen but has not been able to make contact with her.

FOX 5 also attempted to reach out to Khalil Thompson, who is listed as the president of Strategies for Change, but we were not able to make contact with him.