New York

When Michael Cohen testified before the House Oversight Committee last month, the most dramatic moment was a sideshow in which the protagonist—Lynne Patton, a supporter of President Trump—remained silent. As Republican Rep. Mark Meadows challenged Mr. Cohen’s claims that Mr. Trump is a racist, Ms. Patton, who is black, rose and eyed the witness with a disappointed glare.

That prompted a diatribe from Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “Just because someone has a person of color, a black person, working for them, does not mean they aren’t racist,” the Michigan freshman asserted. “Some would even say . . . the fact that someone would actually use a prop—a black woman—in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”

Over breakfast at a Manhattan diner, Ms. Patton says: “The biggest racism to me is the ideology that, again, black people can’t be independent thinkers, that they can’t vote for a party other than the Democratic Party.” She accuses Democrats of “fabricating racism where it doesn’t exist.”

The 46-year-old Ms. Patton is a former cocaine addict who worked for the Trump Organization and got clean with the help of Donald Trump and his children, especially his son Eric. She joined the 2016 campaign as senior adviser for minority outreach. In 2017 Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson named her regional administrator for New York and New Jersey. In that position, she has waged a social-media campaign to highlight appalling conditions in New York City’s public housing. A stickler for the Hatch Act and other ethics guidelines, she insists on separate interviews to discuss her HUD work and—off the clock—her political views.