DC Councilmember Trayon White Sr. is a danger to all DC residents — not just those in Ward 8.
That’s the only conclusion, in my opinion, anyone can reach after reading the affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Matthew Gano in support of White’s federal arrest last month. According to prosecutors, White “corruptly agreed to accept $156,000 in cash payments in exchange for using his position as a D.C. Councilmember to pressure government employees at Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE) and [Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services] to extend several D.C. contracts,” under the city’s violence interrupters program.
The most egregious element of the entire sordid affair wasn’t the money, however. I became enraged by White’s desire to prey on some of the most vulnerable people in the city — people suffering mental health issues.
“What I want you to start thinking about is how we get into the mental health space,” White told the briber, according to a June 26 conversation caught on tape by the FBI.
“Like there’s so much shit we be doing. That’s what I’m saying,” continued White.
“Got four more new years,” he added, referring undoubtedly to the fact that he had prevailed in the recent Democratic primary and was positioned to win the November general election.
White’s comments came without prompting from the FBI informant, revealing White as nothing more than a poverty pimp and a grifter, falsely casting himself as a 21st-century champion of the people.
In 2018, I wrote a series of articles about the mental health crisis among District youth. Some were victims of crime grappling with unresolved trauma. Others were witnesses who displayed what experts have described as vicarious trauma. All of them needed help.
During the COVID-19 pandemic things got worse — for youth and adults.
In February 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 30.7% of adults in the District reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder. That year, the DC Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) spent $357 million on mental health claims, which represented a 21% increase in expenditures.
DBH answered 80,924 calls on its helpline. Emergency psychiatric care was provided to 1,321 people 18 and older. Additionally, 3,014 people who were addicted to drugs also had mental issues, according to the agency’s website.
Alarmingly, in 2023 a total of 518 people died from a fatal opioid overdose, according to the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. That far exceeded the 274 homicides recorded that same year.
The majority — 67% — of people receiving mental health services in DC were Black; 68% of those receiving substance use disorder services were Black.
And 73% of those receiving simultaneous treatment for mental health and substance use were Black.
Shamefully, White tried to persuade someone to mess over the mentally ill — most of whom look like him.
In a later exchange with the man he believed to be his money bag, White proposed they look at housing as another vehicle to help line their wallets, according to Gano’s statement.
Please tell me I am not the only person livid over all of this.
Many of White’s Ward 8 constituents are poor and working class, struggling with a variety of socioeconomic issues, including how to cover the rising costs of housing. More than a few rely on government vouchers. Nevertheless, White was scheming to make their lives more difficult.
Why was he so eager to sell out Ward 8 residents? Why did he seem desperate for cash?
He is making money hand over fist. Councilmembers’ salaries jumped from $161,233.19 in April 2024 to $167,037.58 as of July 1, according to council documents. That amount appears to be more than White has ever made in his public career.
White’s lawyer, Frederick Cooke — famous for representing a few unsavory politicians, including former Mayor Marion Barry — could not be reached for comment.
Late last month, Council Chair Phil Mendelson established an ad hoc committee comprised
of every member except White. Chair Pro Tempore Kenyan McDuffie will lead the group to determine whether to reprimand, censure or expel their Ward 8 colleague.
The committee is expected to hold its first meeting around Sept. 17, when legislators return from their summer recess. It is obligated to decide White’s fate no later than Dec. 16.
Is the council slow-walking the corruption issue?
Even though court proceedings in the criminal case are likely to extend well beyond the calendar year, public officials can — and should — be held to a higher standard when it comes to retaining their official position.
During a telephone interview with me earlier this week, Mendelson said after reading the FBI agent’s affidavit he thought the allegations so serious, he “created the ad hoc committee that Friday following [White’s] Monday appearance in court.”
“The ad hoc committee could meet tomorrow, if they wanted,” said Mendelson, noting, however, that the council’s rules require that a member being investigated be given an opportunity to present their case.
When I asked Mendelson whether he believed White should be expelled, he said, “I don’t want to prejudge but from what we know so far that’s the direction we should be moving.
“The rules say that members consider censure or expulsion. I would think censure would not be appropriate.” Mendelson added.
White is on the November general election ballot, facing Republican nominee Nate Derenge. Democrat Markus Batchelor, who appears to owe the city $2,750 for previous campaign finance violations, has announced a write-in-campaign.
It’s skillet, pot time.
Don’t expect White to leave gracefully by resigning from office and removing his name from the ballot — although FBI Agent Gano wrote that his “affidavit does not represent every fact known to law enforcement about this investigation and is submitted for the limited purpose of establishing probable cause to support the issuance of a criminal complaint and an arrest warrant.”
Over the past several years, I have repeatedly received telephone calls about sundry shakedown tactics deployed by White and some of his Ward 8 posse. Documentation was available, but the developers and business owners feared for their safety and declined to speak publicly.
The person who delivered envelopes filled with cash to White as they sat in a car parked in front of a Ward 6 luxury high-rise apartment building was no stranger to the councilmember. The two apparently had done the corrupt thing before and gotten away with it.
In 2020, one of the briber’s entities held a contract with the Department of Human Services; it was terminated. A battle to get it reinstated ensued. When things started to go further south, a call went out to White, who allegedly “agreed to accept and accepted a $20,000 bribe payment … in return for using his official position as a Councilmember,” according to Gano’s affidavit.
That particular contract wasn’t renewed. However, there apparently was a settlement negotiated through the Office of the Attorney General, which was then under the leadership of Karl Racine. Before White was elected to the council, he worked for Racine.
A spokesperson for current AG Brian Schwalb did not respond to my request for information about the settlement.
What White apparently didn’t know when he was sitting in that car stashing money in his pocket was that his associate — the on-call briber — was in deep trouble.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he fraudulently received funds through the Paycheck Protection Program. He had been arrested and was facing jail time. As part of a plea agreement, he told federal officials that he had a few corrupt friends to discuss. Unsurprisingly, White was at the top of the list.
Call it a return to the scene of a crime.
My grandmother might say it was light reaching darkness. In other words, wrongdoing was finally being exposed.
That’s what happened on Sunday, Aug. 18. White was arrested in the Ward 6 luxury high-rise apartment. Was he living there? Who knows.
This much is clear to me and many residents in the city: Allowing White to continue to claim a seat in the council chamber in the John A. Wilson Building, after being charged with violating local and federal laws he swore to uphold as a councilmember, would be a breathtaking assault on any code of morality or integrity elected officials may claim to honor. It would be yet another reason for youth not to listen to guidance offered by so-called city leaders. And, undoubtedly, it would be ruinous to DC’s statehood aspirations.
During a virtual community meeting last week, some Ward 8 residents seemed to defend White. A couple of folks said they were “praying for Trayon.”
I am not. I will not.
Please don’t expect me to dance around yet another of White’s brazen betrayals of the public’s trust. If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t be using the word allege.
There are pictures of him taking money for Chrissake. His voice is on tape. His words have been transcribed. This is no AI hoax.
Here’s one piece of advice to ordinary citizens troubled by all of this: When one of White’s allies, one of the members of his political cult, tries to fashion his arrest into an example of America’s racist legal system, as they surely will, please do not pick up that card.
This is not that.
This article was initially published at TheDCLine.org
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