2016 Postmortem

DonViejo

(60,536 posts) Wed Sep 28, 2016, 10:13 AM Sep 2016

Fact Checker Trump’s claim that a racial discrimination suit was ‘brought against many real estate..

Fact Checker
Trump’s claim that a racial discrimination suit was ‘brought against many real estate firms’

By Glenn Kessler September 28 at 3:00 AM

“As far as the lawsuit, yes, when I was very young, I went into my father’s company, had a real estate company in Brooklyn and Queens, and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country — it was a federal lawsuit — were sued. We settled the suit with zero — with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. . . . That was a lawsuit brought against many real estate firms, and it’s just one of those things.”

— Donald Trump, remarks in the first presidential debate, Sept. 26, 2016

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The Facts

The Justice Department lawsuit against Donald Trump, his father, Fred Trump, and the Trump company, which owned 39 buildings with 15,000 apartments, actually marks the first mention of Donald J. Trump in The New York Times. The front page headline on Oct. 16, 1973, said: “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City.” Regarding the charges, Trump was quoted: “They are absolutely ridiculous.”

According to Kranish and Fisher, the Justice Department lawsuit was “one of the most significant racial bias cases of the era.” It was based on evidence gathered by testers for the New York City Human Rights Commission, who documented that black people were told no apartments were available in Trump properties while white testers at the same time were immediately offered apartments. In a sampling of 10 Trump buildings, only 1 to 3.5 percent of the occupants were minorities, making it one of the strongest cases the Justice Department had ever seen for violations of the Fair Housing Act.

All the Justice Department wanted was to obtain a settlement in which Trump and his father would promise not to discriminate. But Trump instead hired Roy Cohn, a notoriously combative attorney, and countersued the Justice Department for $100 million ($500 million in today’s dollars) for making false and misleading statements. But his allegations were dismissed by the courts, and two years of litigation later, Trump decided in 1975 to settle before the case went to trial.

“The settlement was much like what the Trumps could initially have gotten,” the book says. As part of the deal, the Trumps were required to place ads assuring minorities that they would have equal access to housing. Trump initially balked at paying for the ads but ultimately was forced to do so.

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The Pinocchio Test

On several levels, Trump’s debate answer was misleading. This was not a case brought against many real estate firms; it was brought against Trump and his father. Trump did not get a better deal; he got essentially the same deal, or possibly worse, that the deal he would have gotten if he had settled before spending legal fees for two years. He also failed to live up to the deal and found himself back in court. While Trump touts there was no admission of guilt, that’s rather typical in these sorts of settlements. The Justice Department simply wanted to get the Trumps to agree to rent to African American tenants — which they failed to do even after agreeing to settle the case.

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