U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro announced Tuesday that her office will retry District Councilman Trayon White following a mistrial in a case alleging a $156,000 bribery scheme.
The jury could not reach a verdict after four days of deliberation. Pirro stated, “We want to accept the jury’s decision today, regroup, get back to work, because there’s a lot of work to do in the city to ensure equity and inclusion in the $20 billion budget.” She also emphasized that her office has video evidence showing cash being given to White as part of the bribe and vowed to retry this case and every corruption case to verdict.
White declined to explain why he received money when a reporter asked: “Let’s stick to the topic, man. Come on. You’re smarter than that. I can’t speak to that.”
The prosecutor noted that White would face up to 15 years in prison if convicted at trial. White won re-election in 2024 despite the looming bribery charge but was expelled from the D.C. council by a majority vote in February 2025. This led to a special election where he ran and won decisively in July.
In a 2018 Facebook post, White claimed Jews controlled weather: “Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation… And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.”
White later apologized and stated he did not realize his comments could be considered anti-Semitic. The organization Jews United for Justice explained the history behind the use of the Rothschilds as a conspiracy theory.
