As the first day of Trayon White’s trial on Tuesday wound to a close, the contours of each side’s strategy had come into focus: Prosecutors intend to argue that the D.C. council member’s conduct two summers ago constituted brazen bribery, while defense attorneys says their client was set up by a corrupt family member coordinating with the FBI in an attempt to escape prison time for his own crimes.
The proceedings unfolded as White — the bespectacled representative of the city’s poorest ward — watched attentively, his expression largely muted, taking notes and occasionally whispering with his attorneys. The three-term lawmaker ended the day on a positive note, posting a selfie on Instagram with the caption: “Still standing tall. Love y’all.”
White, who maintains his innocence, was arrested and indicted in 2024. The council member stands accused of accepting $35,000 in bribes in exchange for agreeing to use his office to influence contracts, after videos showed White exchanging money with an associate and discussing plans to further his business with the D.C. government.
While other city lawmakers have pleaded guilty to crimes in recent decades, White is the first sitting D.C. elected official to go to trial for an alleged crime since his self-professed political mentor, Marion Barry, the larger-than-life former mayor who in 1990 was caught smoking crack cocaine by an FBI sting operation.
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The legal process that unfolds in the coming weeks will determine not only White’s personal and political future, but also the future representation of his approximately 87,000 constituents in Ward 8, where he has both staunch critics and staunch defenders. If convicted, White faces potential prison time and will become immediately ineligible for public office in the District. If acquitted, he may remain in office — unless his colleagues on the council vote to expel him.
Prosecutor John Crabb Jr., in the government’s opening statement, harped on one sentence he said White uttered to his associate Allieu Kamara during a surreptitiously recorded meeting in the summer of 2024: “Once you get me, if you lock eyes and get your understanding — I get to work.”
“We will prove to you that by locking eyes and getting to work, Mr. White means selling his office as a D.C. Council member,” Crabb told the jury. The attorney then offered a preview of what the government would come to argue were White’s motives for accepting the cash: campaign debts, $100,000 he needed for a real estate venture he hoped to get in on in North Carolina, and the lawmaker’s alleged statement that “it’s really expensive to see girls and have fun.”
White’s attorney, Gary Kohlman, called Kamara, the government informant seen on video handing White envelopes of money, a “snitch” in his opening statement. Kamara began cooperating with the FBI after the agency investigated him for pandemic loan fraud and bribery of another D.C. government official — charges to which he has since pleaded guilty — and is “corrupt to the bone,” Kohlman said.
He also described an aspect of the two men’s relationship that the government had not mentioned: Kamara was once married to White’s half-sister, he said.
“It’s almost biblical,” said Kohlman, using “one family member to try to set up another.”
Kamara told The Washington Post on Tuesday that it was “not true” that the two men were brothers-in-law. Lloyd Liu, an attorney for Kamara, declined to comment to The Washington Sun regarding the defense’s statements about their family connection.
Kohlman said Kamara had thrown out the names of other D.C. officials who allegedly took bribes — including Democratic Mayor Muriel E. Bowser — to paint a picture of him giving agents any name he could think of to get out of jail. A spokesperson for Bowser declined to comment on the defense’s statements about the mayor.
The jury will have final word in the trial — a case that has at times divided Washingtonians along lines of race and class, as some of White’s defenders have argued that he is the victim of a justice system stacked against Black people and Black political leaders. Of the 14 jurors — a group which includes two alternates — about five appeared to be Black, though the identities of jurors are kept private.
On Tuesday, the government presented video recordings of White and Kamara meeting in his car throughout the course of the summer of 2024. Kamara had agreed to have the meetings surreptitiously recorded by the FBI, and the federal agents gave him cash to hand to White.
The meetings, the lead FBI agent on the case testified, were an attempt to recreate an alleged prior corrupt relationship between the men, in which Kamara told the agency he had bribed White in 2019 in exchange for promising to help with a city contract dispute. The FBI began investigating White in 2023, the agent said, while Kamara emerged as a potential confidential source later in early 2024.
The videoed conversations in that car were at times intimate. White shared how the stresses of his job and his repeated exposure to death had driven him to therapy. In one video, he vented about the city’s treatment of people in his ward displaced by a fire, complaining that the mayor didn’t care about poor people or Black people.
In another, he talked about romantic problems and wondered aloud whether his relationship was the right fit. White later shared that he was “financially bankrupt,” in part because he was giving money to support people who were asking him for it. The two men frequently ended the conversations by saying they loved each other.
The two men also talked business, the videos show. Kamara told the council member he needed help ensuring that his lucrative city contracts would continue. White agreed to ask various city officials about Kamara’s grants — including D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Lindsey Appiah and Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement Director Kwelli Sneed, both of whom are expected to testify. White also suggested future potential plans for the two in the mental health space — an area of city work that he called a “cash cow.”
White’s legal team isn’t planning to dispute that he accepted the cash from Kamara, but rather question whether he actively solicited the payments. Another defense attorney, in describing the video during cross-examination, said Kamara was “thrusting” the cash in his client’s hand without White requesting it. Prosecutors argued that White, after taking the cash payments, didn’t attempt to return the cash and agreed to “get to work” on Kamara’s behalf.
Video of the pair’s final meeting on Aug. 18, 2024, shows them discussing another potential future business opportunity in federal contracting, an area White said he was interested in pursuing.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to do politics,” he mused, adding that he was thinking about how he could set up additional streams of income.
As White exited Kamara’s car, the two men turned to more light-hearted fare, discussing plans to have some fun together — maybe going on a trip to the Dominican Republic or Colombia.
Then, a new voice can be heard in the video, yelling at White: “Put your hands up.”
Suddenly, White was surrounded by federal agents. He was under arrest.
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