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ST. LOUIS��— Lawyers for Sheriff Alfred Montgomery on Wednesday accused the Missouri Attorney General’s Office of violating ethics rules by including false information about the sheriff hiring his half-brother in a lawsuit seeking Montgomery’s removal from office.

In a hearing in ӣ����Ƶ, David Mason, a former city judge, presented Judge Steven Ohmer with birth certificates showing Montgomery’s father was not the same one listed for his deputy, Malik Taylor.

The space for a father’s name on Taylor’s certificate is blank, according to a copy provided to the Post-Dispatch. But Montgomery’s father was present to testify if needed, Mason told the judge.��

“He is not the father of the man alleged to be Malik Taylor,”��Mason said.

The accusations marked the start of what could become a fierce legal battle over whether Montgomery should be removed from office. In a lawsuit last month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office accused him of abusing his authority by hiring a relative, having a deputy pick up his children from school, refusing to transport city prisoners to the hospital and illegally detaining the city’s jail chief.

The first hearing in the case was held Wednesday. Over the course of about an hour, lawyers argued about whether Montgomery should remain in office while the case is pending. Montgomery’s lawyers rebutted claims made in the lawsuit.��And Judge Ohmer set a timeline for how the case would proceed, with a trial date of Nov. 10.

Montgomery appeared alongside his lawyers��— Mason, who is being paid by the sheriff’s department, Matthew Ghio, who works for the sheriff’s office, and Justin Gelfand, who is being paid by Montgomery himself.��

Several current and former elected officials attended the hearing, including state Sen. Karla May, former state Rep. Wiley Price and Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier.

Sonnier, of Tower Grove East, said she had doubts about the case. She said the sheriff has made mistakes, but he hasn’t been charged with a crime. She expressed unease about the state removing an elected official chosen by city voters.��

“In an ideal world, it’s up to the people,” she said.

Montgomery, 28, took office in January. Six weeks later, he ordered his deputies to handcuff the city’s deputy jail commissioner after accusing her of impeding his access to a detainee, according to his removal suit.

Mason didn’t refute that accusation on Wednesday but said it didn’t break the law or merit removal. It was, he said, a “one-time” thing that wouldn’t happen again.

But the attorney general’s office and media reports have also raised questions about a deputy picking up Montgomery’s children from school in a sheriff’s vehicle.��

Mason said the deputy wasn’t on duty at the time. She picked up the kids, he said, because they had a close relationship��— the children even called her “Grandma.”

“She has a right when she’s off duty to pick up those kids,” Mason said.

Ohmer, a retired city judge appointed to oversee the case by the Missouri Supreme Court due to a conflict of interest with the ӣ����Ƶ court, repeatedly urged the attorneys not to make arguments about the underlying facts of the case.��

That would all come out in time, he said.��

But Gregory Goodwin, a lawyer for Bailey’s office, argued that Montgomery should be removed while the case was pending.

To illustrate his point, he said the sheriff’s office has declined 10 times over the last couple of weeks to take inmates from the city jail to the hospital, as deputies typically do.

On July 4, Montgomery’s office refused to transport an inmate needing emergency surgery. Over the past several days, deputies didn’t transfer two people to the Missouri Department of Mental Health for evaluations. They also refused to take a man to the hospital for an allergic reaction.��

“It’s obvious Mr. Montgomery isn’t going to do the right thing and carry out his obligations,” Goodwin said.

Mason said Montgomery wasn’t to blame: The city is.

The city pays for, oversees and staffs its downtown justice center. But historically, sheriffs have taken the responsibility of moving inmates from the jail to court and back and transporting them elsewhere when needed for medical care.��

Mason said Montgomery’s office was understaffed those days and couldn’t spare the people to take inmates to the hospital.

Ohmer declined to remove Montgomery from office while the case was pending. He said in other similar proceedings across the state, the officials had been charged with a crime. The accusations against Montgomery, while in some cases “disturbing,” were not criminal, he said.��

“We’ll see what the evidence brings,” he said.

At a news conference roughly two hours after the hearing, Montgomery stood beside his lawyers while they took questions from the press.��

Mason and Gelfand maintained that their client had done nothing to merit removal and outlined many of the arguments they’d delivered in court.��

Mason also said he was planning to call Bailey himself to sit for a deposition and answer questions as well as the jail’s health provider and deputy jail commissioner who was handcuffed.

Mason urged people not to jump to conclusions about Montgomery’s guilt.��

“Don’t believe the hype,” he said. “This is a court of law.”

The next hearing in the case is set for Aug. 29.

Post-Dispatch reporter Austin Huguelet contributed.

Updated at 3:45 p.m.