According to court records unsealed on Monday, in Washington, D.C., Trayon White Sr, a councilmember known for advocating antisemitic conspiracy theory has been arrested on allegations that he accepted over $150,000 in bribes in return for leveraging his elected position to assist companies to obtain city contracts.
The Democrat who ran an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2022, was arrested on a federal bribery charge by the FBI on Sunday. He is expected to make his initial court appearance on Monday.
According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, White allegedly agreed in June to receive roughly $156,000 in kickbacks and cash payments in return for coercing government agency employees to extend contracts for violence intervention services with two companies. The contacts were worth over $5 million
Trayon White, who is 40 years old, also received a $20,000 bribe payment to assist settle a contract dispute for one of the companies by pressuring high-level district officials, the affidavit alleges.
An FBI informant who agreed to plead guilty to fraud and bribery charges reported giving White gifts including travel to the Dominican Republic and Las Vegas along with paying him bribes, the FBI said.
White, who has served on the D.C. council since 2017, represents a predominantly Black ward where the poverty rate is nearly twice as high as the overall district. He is running for re-election in November against a Republican challenger.
White was one of two D.C. council members whom Mayor Muriel Bower defeated two years ago in the Democratic primary. White, a former grassroots community activist, was a protégé of former Mayor Marion Barry, who also represented the same ward as White on the council.
In March 2018, White posted a video on his Facebook page claiming that an unexpected snowfall was because of “the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters.” The Rothschilds, a Jewish family that was prominent in the banking industry, are a frequent subject of conspiracy theories.
At the time, White said he was unaware that the weather-related conspiracy theory was antisemitic. A video later surfaced of White pushing a similar conspiracy theory during a meeting of top city officials. He posed a question based on the stereotypical premise that the Rothschilds controlled the World Bank and the federal government
