Council Chairman Kwame “Fully Loaded” Brown spent an hour on Newstalk with Bruce DePuyt this morning in his most lengthy media appearance to date since the Washington Post‘s Mike DeBonis blew the lid off of Navigatorgate last month.

One thing that caught LL’s ear was this line from Brown:

“When I found out how much the vehicle cost, I immediately said that, one, this vehicle should go back and that, two, I would definitely pay for the cost of me using that particular vehicle.”

But is that what really happened? Let’s look at the very first story about the cost of Brown’s pricey Lincoln Navigator, which LL published on January 24.

Council Chairman Kwame Brown, meanwhile, drives a 2011 Lincoln Navigator that costs $1,963.28 a month. … Brown’s spokesman Traci Hughes says the chairman was “appalled” at the cost of the Navigator’s lease, when he was informed by Hughes as she sought comment after LL inquired about it. … Hughes says Brown has just received his own copy of the contract and is trying to determine if it would be more expensive in the long run to back out of the deal, or just swallow the cost.

We know Brown did not give the SUV back to the city immediately—that didn’t happen until a couple of days after DeBonis’ story ran and a tidal wave of indignation swept the city. And Hughes also never said boo about Brown’s intention to pay the city back for using the Navigator. Again, that announcement didn’t come until after the Post story.

Brown obviously would like nothing better than to move past the Navigator story. And frankly, LL wouldn’t mind something new to talk about either. But the story’s not going away as long as Brown keeps telling fibs.

Photo By Darrow Montgomery