Trayon White’s bribery trial ended in a hung jury. What now?

After two years of legal machinations, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White’s fate remains as uncertain as ever.

White’s trial on federal bribery charges ended in a mistrial Monday after jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked, leaving him in limbo as he waits to see whether prosecutors opt to re-try the case or drop the charges. And that means a number of vexing questions facing the ward — and the city — will go unanswered a while longer.

Do his colleagues have an appetite to try and expel him again? How will White navigate the Wilson Building after so many of his unvarnished opinions have been aired in public? And what sort of political future does he still have in the aftermath of this scandal? There are no clear answers, as the city’s political class grapples with an outcome that seemed unthinkable when prosecutors first revealed seemingly damning evidence against the councilmember.

“A hung jury maybe helps him as an individual, but I don’t think it helps him politically,” says Stuart Anderson, an activist who ran White’s 2016 campaign but has since become one of his sharpest critics. “And now everybody stays in a holding pattern.”

Besides the question of another trial, perhaps White’s most immediate concern is whether he would face a second expulsion vote. Even though the Council had never expelled one of its own before, the first vote sailed through last year without any public dissension among members. The gravity of the charges were so severe (and scrutiny from the federal government so intense) that lawmakers felt they had no choice but to act.

Once White won the special election prompted by his own ouster, some entertained the idea of kicking him out again. But enough councilmembers pushed back that those discussions petered out pretty quickly. Lawmakers with constituents east of the Anacostia River weren’t thrilled at the prospect of appearing to have subverted the will of the voters — especially when many assumed he’d be convicted at trial anyway. And if convicted, he would have automatically lost his seat.  

None of the facts have changed since the Council first voted to expel White. If anything, the trial shed more light on his dealings with a city contractor that could run afoul of local ethics laws. 

“I just hope that we haven't reached a point now in this community or even in our society where it doesn't matter what you do as long as it's legal,” says Phil Pannell, perhaps Ward 8’s most seasoned political activist. “That’s a very low bar for anyone’s conduct, particularly a public official’s.”

Council Chair Phil Mendelson said last week that he wouldn’t speculate on what lawmakers might do, but few in the Wilson Building believe there’s any serious appetite for another expulsion vote — especially with another round of legal proceedings possibly looming. White’s supporters and opponents alike believe that’s the right approach, arguing it would only reopen old wounds and further deprive the ward of representation. Besides, he already won one special election to regain the seat.

“They’ve already heard from the voters, and that was before they got to hear more contextual information [during the trial] about what was really going on,” says Jamila White, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Anacostia (who is not related to the councilmember). Expelling White “would not be the right move, especially as we’re going to have an entirely new government at the local level and we need to be thinking about all the things we’re dealing with at the federal level.”

But it’s one thing to avoid another expulsion vote, and another thing entirely for lawmakers to treat White as just another colleague again. Wendy Hamilton, a longtime activist in the ward, says she heard from many lawmakers who felt “betrayed” by White’s apparent coziness with a government contractor accused of malfeasance by city officials, even if jurors didn’t unanimously view it as criminal bribery.

“If you’re pulling your colleague aside and asking their position on a certain bill, how can they be sure you’re acting in good faith after all this?” Hamilton wonders.

Councilmembers have largely kept White at arm’s length since he won the special election, declining to let him sit on a committee even though his seniority would ordinarily dictate that he should be chairing one. (Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen recently said his colleagues have “isolated” White these last few months.) 

But, even before the trial concluded, Fairlawn ANC Tom Donohoe penned a letter to the Council arguing White should be put back on his committees if he was acquitted, reasoning that lawmakers would otherwise be “denying our community a meaningful voice and legislative seat at the table.” White told reporters after the trial concluded that "we want to make sure we have the same rights as everyone else," and similarly demanded his committees restored.

Mendelson declined to share his intentions on that request last week, but the continued uncertainty could only ramp up the pressure for some sort of change in the status quo.

“If he doesn’t have a committee, what influence does he really have?” says Yaida Ford, an attorney and former Council staffer who ran against White in 2020. “He wouldn’t have any agencies under him, so he couldn’t do any oversight. And this could all still be an ethics violation, even without the criminal charge, so what does Council do about that?”

The Council has handled a very similar situation before involving White’s political mentor: former mayor (and Ward 8 councilmember) Marion Barry. He was also accused of taking cash from city contractors, so lawmakers censured him and stripped him of his committees. This could perhaps offer a middle ground between taking no action and working to expel White.

The councilmember may feel some measure of vindication, for now, but Hamilton feels he still has plenty of fences to mend both in the ward and the Wilson Building. She believes White could go a long way towards winning trust back among his colleagues by emulating Barry when he returned to politics in the ward and trying to pursue some form of redemption. 

“I hope that during this time he has taken some opportunity to reflect and say, ‘What could I have done differently? What can I do differently?’” Hamilton says. “There's an opportunity for him to truly make some tangible changes, and so will he decide to do that?”

And with this cloud still hanging over him, it’s a real question how effective White can be, particularly as Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George prepares to become the city’s next mayor.

Lewis George has generally stood by White amid this scandal, opting to swear him into office last year even when the city’s judges refused. (White went out of his way to thank her for doing so Monday, praising her "courage.") But their association has also earned her quite a bit of flak — she faced plenty of negative press, and criticism from her primary rivals, when she attended White’s birthday party and called him a “mentor” earlier this year. How much will the new mayor be willing to work with White if it means attracting questions distracting from her first term agenda?

“Her team asked me if she should go to his party, and I recommended it,” recalls Anderson. “If my good friend gets locked up tomorrow, I’m still going to his birthday. That’s his personal business… I think she sees things the same way. There’s no bad blood between them.”

Jamila White says the councilmember has already been talking with her and other ANCs about which priorities they want to “hand over to the new administration showing the changes that we want to see in the community,” so she’s similarly confident he’ll manage to get things back on track.

"We're going back to city hall, not gloating but grateful," White said Monday.

But White’s political future remains highly uncertain. Most political observers in the ward believe the arrest damaged his standing, if not among his most die-hard supporters who backed him in court every day, then at least in the eyes of those who are less committed to his particular brand of politics. After all, he only won the 2025 special election by about 200 votes, his closest race in years.

Even if he had been acquitted, “the cloud doesn’t go away after the trial is over,” Ford says, recalling her days working for former Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, who avoided legal consequences in the wake of an ethics scandal but still lost his next primary. “This happens in any place without term limits: After so much time in the job, maybe you become less effective and at some point people are ready for a change.”

Pannell, ever the booster for ranked choice voting, also notes that White could be more vulnerable with the new system in place. White has proven to be a divisive candidate, and ranked choice is designed to reward contenders who earn voters’ second choices instead of just their first.

It’s not at all clear whether White would even want to run again, especially if the prospect of a new trial remains in the ether. In the undercover surveillance videos unveiled during his trial, he speaks candidly about his ambivalence about running for reelection in 2024 and his mounting financial woes. White might’ve avoided prison time (at least for now), but it’s a real question how much longer he’ll stick around D.C. politics.

“I don’t think he is as strong as he was in terms of political support in the ward,” Anderson says. “Life goes on.”