Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White has invited comparisons to Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry basically ever since becoming his protege more than a decade ago. But White has perhaps never deserved them more than he did Saturday as he sat in the pews at Anacostia’s Union Temple Baptist Church, following in Barry’s footsteps both figuratively and literally.
Just as Barry did 30 years prior, White stood with the Rev. Willie Wilson to receive forgiveness after getting caught in an FBI sting. (And, much like Barry, White spurned his spiffy suits for more traditional African garb for the occasion.) The service was dubbed a chance for the congregation to pray for White’s “redemption” two days after he was formally indicted on federal bribery charges, and the many faith leaders to speak on White’s behalf were unanimous: He was set up by the federal government, part of its long-running efforts to undermine Black leaders, and he deserves a second chance. This will undoubtedly sound familiar to anyone who followed the mayor-for-life’s career.
Over the duration of the hour-and-a-half long gathering, White earned comparisons to Barry, ex-drug kingpin Rayful Edmond, David (of Goliath-slaying fame), and (perhaps more problematically for White) Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan, who has been no stranger to the pulpit at Union Temple over the years. (The crowd of ministers largely hailed from various Christian churches around the city, but White’s recent conversion to Islam ensured that several speakers from local mosques also earned the floor.)
White himself was silent for most of the service, except for briefly thanking the crowd for the support. He chose instead to stand alongside his family and longtime confidant Jimmie Jenkins and bask in the adulation of his fans. He never asked for forgiveness or admitted any wrongdoing, but the crowd was ready to offer absolution nonetheless. “If your grace is sufficient for us, it’s sufficient for this councilmember,” Wilson said in an opening prayer. “He is not trash to be thrown in the trash bin of history.”
The Rev. Willie Wilson speaks at a service at Union Temple Baptist Church for Trayon White, following White’s bribery arrest. Credit: Darrow Montgomery
All this might ring a bit hollow to many ears in the District. White has yet to show contrition or make any public statement about these accusations. But this approach has worked before. Barry was able to use his alliance with Wilson to rekindle his popularity in Ward 8, building back from his drug scandal to win a seat on the Council and (eventually) a fourth term as mayor. White can only hope to be so lucky.
And much like Barry, White has so far held onto the loyalty of his most die-hard supporters, who are ready to discount everything prosecutors and the press say about him, no matter how incriminating. If White was really taking money in exchange for wielding influence in the Wilson Building, then he must’ve been using it to help the community, the thinking goes. Or, perhaps more simply: Why should anyone in Southeast trust the FBI?
“How many of you know there’s a conspiracy continually trying to take us out?” asked the Rev. Kendrick Curry, senior pastor of the Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church, in a representative bit of preaching to the crowd of roughly 100 people. “Whether it’s the FBI or CIA or any other form of entrenched wickedness, we won’t stand for it.”
The problem, as Loose Lips sees it, is that Barry and White are not the same, no matter how much his defenders may wish otherwise.
Barry’s foibles were easier to cast as a personal failing, rather than a betrayal of the public trust. Maybe some residents could identify with their own struggles with drug addiction (even if Barry had taken things to an untenable extreme). Will Ward 8 be able to empathize with White (allegedly) speculating over the lucrative nature of housing and mental health contracts, or demanding bribe money to pay for his girlfriend’s vacation? LL is skeptical.
The behavior described in the damning FBI affidavit cuts to the heart of White’s appeal as a man of the people, painting him as a politician who only sees these badly needed programs to slow gun violence or get people housed as a way to line his pockets. He can stump with Wilson and play the Barry card all he wants, but the accusations against him are much more similar to those that felled ex-Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. or former At-Large Councilmember Michael A. Brown, and neither have been able to resuscitate their careers in quite the same way that Barry did. White may play well to his adoring fans on Instagram, but does he really have the same juice as the man who defined the first three decades of D.C. politics?
“Ward 8 will always be filled with a lot of people who come from where Trayon comes from, and some of them will side with him,” says one ward insider, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “A lot of the time, people compare him to [Barry]. But they are not the same person.”
Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White hugs supporters at a church service following his arrest on federal bribery charges. Credit: Darrow Montgomery
That’s not going to stop White from running plays from Barry’s playbook, it seems. White was on the scene at a protest along the newly renamed Marion Barry Avenue SE shortly after a violence interruption worker was shot and killed by police last week, dodging questions about his bribery scandal while calling for body camera footage of the incident to be released. (The irony was not lost on LL that the victim, Justin Robinson, worked for the very same type of organization that White was allegedly milking for kickbacks.) White spent the next few days posting about the incident on Instagram, in addition to sharing frequent messages of support from his fans.
White has even been bold enough to start accusing one local activist, Cameron Montgomery, of being an “agent provocateur of the FBI” in one (since-deleted) Instagram story. “Please DO NOT harm him,” White added. You’ll forgive LL for not believing his sincerity after other Instagram posts appeared to show one of the men believed to be informing on White getting assaulted outside a Maryland restaurant.
Montgomery, who last made headlines for some racially insensitive comments he made while working on the Ward 7 Council race, tells LL that he was taken aback by White’s post, considering the two have barely talked recently. Montgomery posted Instagram stories of his own showing DMs between the two where he asked White for a job in his Council office, and, but for a few other petty squabbles, the pair haven’t interacted all that frequently.
“Similar to former president Donald Trump, the councilman has a cult-like following,” Montgomery writes in a text message, stressing that he has no association with the feds. “So I believe the councilman as the self proclaimed ‘people’s champ’ knows full well what he was doing insinuating I had any involvement with the FBI. He in some way was signaling to his supporters I should be next…While he may think I am the source of everything, the truth is residents and community members on their own are getting fed up and are willing to get what the ward needs without him.”
LL is no lawyer, but he can’t imagine this sort of behavior is helping White’s legal case (particularly if his attorneys hope to secure some sort of plea agreement that avoids the maximum 15 years he’s facing in federal prison). But White’s social media behavior is also damaging for the community at large.
The FBI has earned the public’s skepticism many times over, particularly where Black politicians and activists are involved. But for White to lean into these conspiracy theories, telling his constituents that their eyes are deceiving them when they can see photos of him stuffing envelopes of cash into his jacket pocket, strikes LL as a thoroughly cynical, downright reprehensible approach.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t still work. White looks like a goner in the near term, with the Council champing at the bit to expel him from office, but there’s always other elections to think about. Such is life in D.C. politics.