Lonnie Bunch’s Retirement, Trayon White’s Jury, And 25 Years Since 9/11

0:00Today on CityCast DC, we're going to mark 25 years since the terrorist attacks on September 11th and how that day changed the district. We're going to talk about Lonnie Bunch's retirement and what Trump's war on Smithsonian means for DC and what preview Councilmember Trion White's bribery trial as jury selection kicks off. Plus in a member's only fourth segment, we're going to look at DC's ongoing efforts to do something, anything, about the rat problem. Starting from special trash cans to birth control to poison. I'm here with our CityCast contributor, Mark Fisher and my CityCast colleague Emma Uber. Today is Friday, September 11th. I'm Michael Schaefer and here's what DC is talking about. Hey, Mark. Hey, Mike.

1:00How are you? Good. Good. Hi, Emma. Hey, Mike. So I expect we'll have very different perspectives on this, but September 11th, it's the 25th anniversary. There's endless amount of conversation about what we remember and what we don't remember from that day. Mark, were you here? I was. I was at home getting ready to go to work at the Washington Post and I heard on the radio about the first plane hitting the first tower and I thought, hmm, and started listening to the radio and watching TV and within a few minutes, it seemed this was something very big. So I got in the car, went downtown and started reporting on Kay Street, right, near the post building. As people were fleeing the office buildings, everyone was pouring into the street. There were rumors more than there were facts, rumors about the Capitol having been hit, about the Pentagon having been hit, about them coming for the White House.

2:02You know, it wasn't loud panic. It was quiet and very scared attitude among people who were just getting into the street. They didn't know where to go. The traffic was already gumbed up and there was nowhere to flee to and yet people felt the need to get away somehow away. I remember that day I was biking into work and it was so pretty and I had this interview I was supposed to do and I was kind of dreading it because it was going to be a very hard interview. And I got to a lobby of our building and there was a TV there, which is there, there weren't usually TVs there and I didn't really take much notice of it. I just thought that's weird and I went upstairs to our magazines office and someone told me what it happened and my first thought embarrassingly was, oh, I guess I don't have to do that interview now because it was with like a top MPD person. Because I had the bike with me, I started biking around just to gather scene and I had

3:07a couple of like a couple of things stand out to me. One I was at that Haines Point now in the news, East Potomac Park and I saw this guy fishing. You know, and I thought like there's a guy who probably doesn't know this news at all. It was an old dude and I get up close to him and he was in tears. He had been at the Pentagon and they sent everyone home. He didn't know what to do. So she went fishing. And I remember biking past the Washington Post building. There was a long line of people outside because the poster was putting out an extra. I don't think the stuff that the papers ever got there because the like traffic was blocked coming into town. But this line of people was waiting because they just wanted some tangible thing to remember the day by. They did eventually get there and in fact that was the very last print extra edition that the Washington Post ever published because we're the dawn of the internet age and the website quickly became the way to put out news quickly.

4:07But that day was the last time the editors decided in the middle of the morning that by early afternoon we needed to have a printed newspaper on the street. And indeed there were people lined up around the block because they wanted that memento, that sort of proof that they were there that they lived through this, that physical proof and that's the last time that ever happened. The thing that sort of stands out in memory about DC is so I had this interview I didn't want to do. And I was late and sort of dilly dallying. I forgot my like, you know, media lanyard with police pass and IDs and stuff. And then I'm biking around and all of a sudden I was trying to bike across the river to the Pentagon because it was blocked to cars. And all of a sudden they were like, you know, security of some sort. I don't remember which agency. I was looking for IDs and I saw some reporters flashing their press passes and they got passed and I had nothing.

5:09And I think of that because since then the sort of security apparatus in Washington has become so much more pronounced. And that's a process that had begun long before that. And it has continued long after that. And it is again part of the kind of conversation now as Trump administration wants to fence off Lafayette Square and is citing security reasons for things like the ballroom. Going back like a hundred years people who worked in offices downtown used to like go take their lunch on the White House lawn because you could walk right in and it was a nice green patch of grass. And you know, if you needed to take a leak you could go inside and use the bathroom. And obviously we're not there anymore. But I feel like, you know, the political, the geopolitical situation has changed dramatically. But what hasn't changed dramatically is the kind of steady encroachment of like Jersey barriers and security stuff in the city. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

6:11Every time you think they've finally walled off as much of the cities they possibly can. They find more. The fencing of DC is really something that the Trump administration has specialized in. And this latest proposal to completely fence off Lafayette Park really would keep unwanted people at bay at quite a considerable distance from the White House. You know, as you said, it wasn't that long ago that you could walk right up to the White House gates. It wasn't that long ago that Pennsylvania Avenue was an actual street with cars and people and part of the city. So more and more, we see that the residents convenience and just their ability to enjoy the city is constricted and cut back and no end in sight. I don't dare ask. Do you have any memories of 9-11? Yeah, this is a little embarrassing. I'm showing my age. I wasn't alive. My grade was cursed to have this conversation every year because we were the first grade

7:15coming through school that on 9-11 teachers would sit down to talk about it and we'd be the first grade that had not. Some of us were infants and some of us were not alive. And so it actually is really interesting because we always had a really interesting discussion with our teachers who like always said they felt very old but then also had a discussion about memory and what did we know about it and what and I think that I don't have any memory of the world before. This security apparatus that you speak of, right? Like I've always had that level of TSA going through airports. My parents always remark. It didn't used to be like the things like that but that's all I know. And this is, I mean, Washington definitely under in the last year has become more fenced off but I've only ever known a really highly regulated and fenced off DC. I mean to your point, Mike, I saw social media comment the other day saying that, you know, pound for pound in the last five years, the fencing industry and the DMV is probably

8:17one of the most profitable. You know. There was something that Michael Wolfe, the Trump biographer, said, I've talked about in the pod too, I think. Apparently during Trump's real estate days, he would say or had said sometime, not all buildings last forever but they last long enough that you don't remember what was there first, what was there before. You know, and I feel like that is what's also true of the sort of security apparatus. I remember, you know, in the months, weeks, years, whatever after 9, 11, when you go into an office building to go to someone's office, all of a sudden you started, there were these like logbooks at the front desk where you needed to like sign in and show an ID to the security guard. I think it's what we call security theater now. I don't know that that made anyone any safer. But it seemed very alien and, you know, I'm a journalist. So I like, I recoil at that kind of security, state, civil liberties question. But as with everything before long, it seemed really normal and do you stop remembering what was there before? It still bothers the heck out of me and I, you're better than me then.

9:20At every, every office building I've gone into since, actually, it started really with the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. This is when those kinds of checks set, lobby, front desks came fully into play and I have signed every one of those logbooks, Bob Mussolini. And there's never been, no one's ever once looked at it. Well, it's this Bob Mussolini. The one thing that is happening this year that they are going to break ground tomorrow September 12th on sort of a education museum visitor centaurie kind of thing at the Pentagon site. It is, I guess, the only 9-11 site that hasn't had like a educational, like, interpretive facility given the kind of messaging at the Department of War. I sort of shutter to think what kind of interpretation they will be doing of 9-11.

10:21But if we think about Emma's generation, blessedly, without memory of that, I guess we are going to live real time, the debate about how people are going to be told about this who don't have their own independent memories. Great. And it's been planning for two decades. So I would hope that it would be a good faith and straightforward telling of something that shaped our country forever. It's going to be 52,000 square feet. And yeah, I've been before and the benches are harrowing and telling an important story about the 184 people killed. But I do think that it's important to have something that explains the significance of those benches because, as you said, there's now a whole generation of people that don't have personal experience or personal memory of that day. Beedish, and to see how much detail, how much narrative is included in that memorial, if you think about the World War II memorial, which would be my candidate for Washington's worst memorial, Bob Mussolini indeed.

11:22If you don't know the story of World War II, you will leave the World War II memorial knowing as little, if not less than you came in. There's just no context, no factual story. And you can't help but learn something about the Vietnam War when you go to the Vietnam War if only picking up on the emotions and the misgivings that the country had about its involvement in Vietnam. All you get from the World War II is triumphalism. I suspect that we'll get, if this is indeed a Trump approved or Trump-inspired package at the Pentagon, I suspect that you'll get a similar sort of triumphalism, although that's kind of hard to pull out of the 9-11 story. Yeah, I'm not sure the level of Trump's involvement. Like I said, I think it's been in planning for two decades now. And Congress has invested millions of dollars, but also Virginia is giving some state funding. It'll be interesting to see what exactly the language is.

12:25Maybe I'm overly optimistic, feels like the wrong word, but that something still are sacred enough to not have that Trump-branded triumphalism mixed in, but I guess we'll see. One more 9-11 story before we switch subjects. It's a happy one. 9-11 was a Tuesday on that Friday. I got a call from a woman I knew, and she wanted to ask about a mutual friend who had been in New York. Mutual friend was fine. I found out a call back, and that led to, hey, we should get coffee. And we've been married for 20-some years now. Wow. That's a great story. So here we are. That is a great story. Speaking of historical interpretation, Lonnie Bunch had a Smithsonian, announced his retirement

13:28this week. He said it was his own decision, but it's pretty hard to separate it from the mounting political pressure, insults, attacks on the Smithsonian. And now they got to find a successor for the country. This is like a big issue about the independence of institutions, from the government, pre-Inquiry, the stories we tell ourselves as a country. For DC, it's also a really practical thing, which is that thousands and thousands of our neighbors work at the Smithsonian. And they are like a big piece of the city's tourism economy and a piece of our cultural infrastructure. And what happens now, I think, is going to make quite a difference in the feel and vibe of the district. It's a scary moment for the cultural and intellectual engine of this city. And of the nation, the only example we have to look toward as to what might happen next is very sadly the Kennedy Center.

14:30And so we know now from direct experience just how quickly and just how easily Trump and his cronies are able to demolish dismantle erase what seemed to be a solid cultural institution. And the Smithsonian is much larger. It's a much more sprawling institution, but it is very much susceptible to that kind of attack. And the way that would happen is for Trump to complete his takeover as he did at the Kennedy Center by appointing people to the board that controls the Smithsonian. That is a little bit more difficult to task because he's got to go. Congress has some folks who they appoint to the board and the Chief Justice of the United States is at least the titular head of the board. And so he could conceivably assert himself, although he traditionally those guys have not played a very active role in matters of policy and personnel.

15:35But someone's going to have to pick this new director. And maybe Bunch was figuring that a temporary and interim person from within the institution could carry through to at least near the end of Trump's term, but there's still quite a bit of time. Two years plus plenty of time for Trump to move in and make mischief. So I know Emma, you've covered some of the legal battles over the Kennedy Center. The parallels I guess are sort of like the Kennedy Center. There's a lot of like sophisticated Washingtonians who are like, eh, the Smithsonian, they think of it as sort of middle brow and not, you know, not that hip. One difference, as he said, is the board. It's the question of who picks the board. The Kennedy Center, they can be bounced whenever you want. They can be brought in whenever you want. There's no fixed number. I don't think that and it's entirely up to the president to pick them. At Smithsonian, as you say, it's trick here. The board has often selected their own replacements, but they have to get a sign off from the president

16:38and from the Congress. There are some ex officio people. So Trump has a lot of influence already, but he does not yet control the full board. There's a couple of agencies. These will be filled. So the criminology of like the Blaney Bunch succession is going to be tied up with like this very complicated thing of like who gets to be on the board. And as always, there's some interplay of like money and influence and prestige and whatever, like when you want to get board members on any institution. That's going to be a thing to watch really closely because that a lot of people could have been in a lot worse position. He's this sort of a vincular jolly guy who does community history. He founded the African American History Museum, but it's like he's not anyone's picture of some like radical jargon filled woke academic. So he's managed to like in his sort of personal affability stave off.

17:40I think some of the stuff, but obviously not that much of it. But boy, the potential here for a standoff and for litigation, it could be way bigger than anything going out the Kennedy Center. Right. And you have to think Bunch thought about this, gained this all out before resigning, right? I mean, in his resignation letter to the Smithsonian staff, he said that it's time for my next chapter, a chapter that will allow me to continue to protect the integrity of the Smithsonian. And I don't really know what that means. He's been quite vague publicly about the extent to which Trump administration pressure weighed in how difficult that's been, which is probably pretty wise because I think that any public statements would just invite more scrutiny. But obviously, this is not a stupid person. I would think that there would have been some sort of succession strategy laid out. And so it'll be interesting to see, you know, if that works and how that ends up getting

18:40planned out. I mean, just on an anecdotal note, I was actually at a documentary screening at the Hirschhorn on Thursday night. And Bunch was supposed to be there, but ended up instead just kind of recording a video and speaking. His wife was there, some other Smithsonian officials were there, but, you know, he got this rousing and standing ovation from the audience, which was, it was a documentary about DC. It was a lot of Native Washingtonians. And he really seemed to have become this like iconic figure for the crowd. So it was interesting to see how well received he was and how people really spoke highly of him and his legacy. I'm really eager to see some more reporting on the thinking behind his decision to leave now. Is he not well? Is he really feeling the pressure from Trump to move out?

19:43He has said that he's felt very much under the gun and had difficult meetings with Trump, difficult conversations. And how does he intend to fight this battle from outside? No one succeeded at doing that who's left other agencies in Washington. So a lot of questions there. And I'm not sure that the path forward is one that's going to make people scientists and historians and all the other experts at the Smithsonian feel confident in their jobs going forward. As a member of media, it's pretty impressive. The amount of competition and speed around the coverage. The post, the times in the Atlantic were a lot of the post folks who used to cover these institutions. It's the Atlantic scooped everyone because they found out independently of the embargo. So they were able to get a story up first. I've been cold comfort, but there are not that many things nowadays where that amount of like, reportorial firepower is brought.

20:45So hopefully those reporters will answer some of those questions, Mark. All right. I don't know how much there is at the Trion White trial, but there's all the firepower we need because Emma's covering it for us. Jerry Selection started this week. So Trion White, you know, DC Council member from Board 8, about to stand trial for bribery, at least a list of his defense witnesses, the people he intends to call. And it had, you know, civic leaders and so people you'd assume he would call. But there was also like an FBI special agent, which I don't understand that. Do you have any sense of that? I don't really, though, one thing the judge said when giving instructions to potential jurors has me for me a bit of a hypothesis. The judge said the potential jurors in his opening remarks before they filled out their questionnaires that Trion White may argue that he was entrapped, which we already knew

21:48that was a possibility. But to me, that signals that the defense may need to call an FBI agent to ask that agent questions about their investigative process and try to prove that there was entrapment at play. I know that when the indictment was unsealed, it was like two years ago, it included photos of Trion White taking lots of cash and stuffing them into his chest pocket from a, I guess, an FBI informant, someone who had his car wired up with cameras. There's photos out there. Has the video of that been released? I assume that will be played at the trial. I don't believe so. And I would think that would be played at the trial as well. But no, I don't think that that video has been publicly released at this time. So that will be interesting. Again, Trion White and the prosecution have actually kind of agreed to admit that Trion White accepted that cash. So I actually don't know how much of a sticking point that interaction is going to be.

22:53I really think it's going to be in the weeds about whether that cash was clearly a quid pro quo agreement and whether Trion White was entrapped. Maybe he was just selling the guys in baseball cards or something. I don't know exactly what the narrative there is going to be, but it'll be interesting to see. Do you have a sense of just from early days, who are Trion White's lawyers? Do we get any sense of what their style is going to be? Is it try to get the one juror who you think is reachable to nullify? Is it going to be an emotional thing? Is it going to be sort of pincers taking apart the entrapment? I noticed that the lead prosecutor is one of the big heavy weights of the U.S. attorney's office who was demoted by Ed Martin because he had been involved in January six prosecutions. So it's maybe somebody who's more muscle than they would have been able to bring it at a different point.

23:54But I'm curious about the defense. Right. We haven't seen any like arguments yet. Obviously, Jerry's election is set to begin this morning. As you said, there's some prosecutorial firepower. And then White's defense is pretty experienced as well. His lead defense attorney Warren Coleman as a former public defender, but was also the former senior counsel for DC Attorney General Carl Racine. And he also has an expert in bribery trials on his defense team, who's also a former federal prosecutor, who has been on the other side of these bribery trials. And then he has another lawyer that has represented him in the past when he tried to challenge the DC Council's authority to kind of expel him. So there's someone who's very familiar with kind of the DC legal scene. There's someone who has previously prosecuted federal bribery cases. And so it'll be interesting to see what their strategy is. Mark, do you have any sense from like, this is not the first trial on these lines.

24:58And DC, what we can expect here. I think we're going to see a big play for jury nullification. And we saw the first hint of that in Treyon White's Instagram video the other day, where he basically called on black Washingtonians to answer their jury summons, come to the courthouse and be on his jury and help him out. And it was a pretty flagrant attempt to appeal to blacks sense of racial solidarity. It was also based on a not very clear fact pattern about DC juries. The city is now about 44% black. And about 40% of the jury summons go out to black Washingtonians. So that's within range. He's absolutely right that fewer black show up to their jury duty than do whites, Asians

25:58or Hispanics. They both the local and the national statistics back that up. But I took a look at what happens after that. And the fact is that blacks are somewhat underrepresented on DC juries by about 10%, which is generally considered the threshold for evidence of discrimination. When you look across the country at how black jurors and white jurors and jurors of other races behave, it's really not that different. Black jurors are a little bit more likely to rule for defendants in criminal cases, but it's really a very small percentage. It's about 4% difference. So Trown White clearly trying to influence how people think and feel about his being tried on this charge. But I'm not sure that it's going to be very fruitful as far as changing the composition of that jury. This trial is taking place in US District Court, not MDC Superior Court.

27:00I don't know the answer to this. Is it the same jury pool? Essentially, it is. In both cases, they have expanded the pool. It used to be that they based their list of names on drivers licenses and live people so, well, you know, I'm not everybody has a driver's license. Then they were at one point using voter roles, obviously not everybody registers to vote. So they now use a whole menu of sources, four names and addresses to try to draw from the broadest pool possible. That's true in both the federal and DC levels. The trial starts in earnest, one stereo selection is done, arguments will start. How long do they think it's going to go on? Yeah, they expect arguments for the trial to last two weeks. So there'll be a day or two, hopefully no more of jury selection. Then arguments for two weeks and then jury deliberation. And to Mark's point about the video earlier, I also think it's kind of, obviously there's been now legal arguments over this video.

28:02And White's team has really emphasized that in the video, he said, you know, not saying all black people agree with me. I'm not saying all white people don't agree with me. I just want a jury representative, my community. And obviously that community means DC, but also I think that that white was also referring to Ward 8, which is obviously a predominantly black area of DC. And I think that it's clear that he feels like, you know, especially having been reelected in Ward 8, even with not a majority of the vote, he feels like his support or the perspective on the case is very divided based on the geography of the city. Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the fallacies of the white conversation has been this assumption that he's like super popular in his district, 70% of the people voted against him when he came back into office. And obviously those 70% split their votes up. So he's, he's there now.

29:03But but I think this that misapprehension has like affected the behavior of a lot of people, including like the rest of the DC political establishment that was not especially energetic in trying to stop him from coming back, even though they knew that having a guy there who's standing trial could wind up being very embarrassing for the district and not a lot of the establishment that it's not like he is a pillar of their group and someone they hold very closely. That's true as well as of the presumptive next mayor who has appeared with Trayon White in a couple of settings and who does not seem to be speaking out against him or running in the other direction. They work together on the council. They work together well by all accounts. And so Louis George is not exactly positioning herself as opposed to Trayon White or making any pre-judgment about how this case ends.

30:04All right. I want to give a big thank you to our newest city cast DC neighbors Sarah L. Aria a Conner W. Alan G and J Dwayne G Michael S. Lydell C and Sean O. Thank you all for your support. To say all those people and every other paid subscriber gets a bonus fourth roundup chat. We are going to be talking about who's winning the war on rats. I'm afraid the rats may be ahead, but we'll see. Feels like it. If you want to be sure you always get the full episode, please become a member. Head to membership dot city cast dot FM and sign up. It's only 10 bucks a month. Members get ad free listening, exclusive members events and an extra events newsletter each and every week. Again, that's membership dot city cast dot FM. Mark and Emma, thank you guys for being here. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And that is all for today here on CityCast DC. Our production team this week with Alexander Turk and Matthew Rogers. You can check out all of our excellent newsletters and reporting at DC dot city cast dot FM. Our hosts are Bridget Todd and me, Michael Schaefer.

31:04Music is by Alex Roald Dan with additional music from Philip Hayers and Blue Blue from triple scoop music via Getty Images. If you enjoyed the show, why not text a friend who is in jury selection right now. We'll be back Monday morning with more news from around the city. Bye.