IF IT WALKS LIKE A KLUX:

One early red flag arose in 1973, when President Richard Nixon's Justice Department -- not exactly the radicals of the day -- sued Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals.

I've waded through 1,021 pages of documents from that legal battle, and they are devastating. Donald Trump was then president of the family real estate firm, and the government amassed overwhelming evidence that the company had a policy of discriminating against blacks, including those serving in the military.

To prove the discrimination, blacks were repeatedly dispatched as testers to Trump apartment buildings to inquire about vacancies, and white testers were sent soon after. Repeatedly, the black person was told that nothing was available, while the white tester was shown apartments for immediate rental.

A former building superintendent working for the Trumps explained that he was told to code any application by a black person with the letter C, for colored, apparently so the office would know to reject it. A Trump rental agent said the Trumps wanted to rent only to "Jews and executives," and discouraged renting to blacks.

Donald Trump furiously fought the civil rights suit in the courts and the media, but the Trumps eventually settled on terms that were widely regarded as a victory for the government. Three years later, the government sued the Trumps again, for continuing to discriminate. [...]

Another revealing moment came in 1989, when New York City was convulsed by the "Central Park jogger" case, a rape and beating of a young white woman. Five black and Latino teenagers were arrested.

Trump stepped in, denounced Mayor Ed Koch's call for peace and bought full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty. The five teenagers spent years in prison before being exonerated. In retrospect, they suffered a modern version of a lynching, and Trump played a part in whipping up the crowds.

As Trump moved into c[****]s, discrimination followed. In the 1980s, according to a former Trump c[*****]o worker, Kip Brown, who was quoted by The New Yorker: "When Donald and Ivana came to the c[****]o, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. ... They put us all in the back."

In 1991, a book by John O'Donnell, who had been president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and C[*****]o in Atlantic City, quoted Trump as criticizing a black accountant and saying: "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."

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