A D.C. city councilman who earlier this year suggested that a cabal of Jewish financiers control weather patterns donated $500 to a Nation of Islam event that featured an anti-Semitic speech by Louis Farrakhan, according to election filings disclosed this month.
Trayon White (D., Ward 8) donated the funds from his constituent-services account, which holds private donations intended to help poor constituents with their expenses.
The donation, which helped fund a February event where Farrakhan declared the “powerful Jews are my enemy,” may have violated the campaign-finance law requiring constituent-service funds to be spent on Washington, D.C. residents.
A spokesman for the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance told the Washington Post that agency officials are looking into the possible violation.
White said he was unaware of the donation, but defended the Nation of Islam’s record in providing services to impoverished African-American communities.
“The Brothers from the Nation are of the few men that show up to help . . . us address crime and social ills in Southeast. They also run a feeding program in several public housing communities in ward 8,” White wrote in a text message to the Washington Post. “I’m a Christian but I support a lot of people and all religions who support my community.”
White’s account of the donation differs from that of constituent-services fund’s treasurer, who said White personally directed him to make the donation.
White made national headlines in March for a Facebook rant in which he accused the Rothschilds — a Jewish family of wealthy European financiers — of manipulating weather patterns to exercise control over urban areas.
The anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering echoed many of Farrakhan’s public speeches, including the Saviour’s Day address he delivered in March. In that speech, Farrakhan slammed Jews as “satanic” and “the mother and father of apartheid.”
As part of his mea culpa for the Facebook post, White toured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Thursday. His visit did not have the intended effect, however, as a reporter observed him making a number of insensitive comments to his guide before leaving the tour at the halfway point to talk on the phone outside the museum.