D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr., who has been indicted by a federal grand jury on a bribery charge, is set to appear in court Thursday afternoon in an arraignment hearing.
White was indicted last week after a jury found he had, in fact, taken $156,000 in cash payments from a business owner in exchange for help in renewing their companies’ violence-interruption contracts with the D.C. government.
He was caught on video where the company owner offered to pay White $15,000 for information related to the extension of their contracts. White, who has represented Ward 8 on the D.C. Council since 2016 and was the chairman of the Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs that oversaw some of the District’s violence-interruption efforts, took the money.
The two contracts between the unnamed business owner and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services were valued at $5.2 million. The payments to White represented about 3% of the total contract value, prosecutors said.
Overall, the business owner paid White a total of $35,000 in four meetings between June and August.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he plans to remove White as chairman of the council’s Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs. White would be disqualified from holding public office if he’s convicted.
White has yet to announce if he plans to withdraw his name from the Ward 8 ballot, though there has been no public petition for him to step down.
Currently on the November ballot for the Council seat is White and Republican primary winner Nate Derenge, alongside write-in candidates Markus Batchelor, Michael Brown, Khadija Long and Olivia Henderson. WTOP news partner 7News reported that White did attend the first Ward 8 political forum Wednesday evening.
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