Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going after Donald Trump this week with several simultaneous lines of attack, including a coordinated effort Tuesday to hit the GOP nominee over housing discrimination lawsuits brought against him and his family in the 1970s and 1980s.
Clinton’s team released an attack ad early Tuesday morning in which a retired nurse, Mae Brown Wiggins, alleged she was denied an apartment in a Trump-owned complex in 1963 because she is an African-American.
The GOP nominee was 17 years old at the time.
As claims of racial discrimination grew against the Trump brand in the late 1960s, Rep. Eleanor Norton, D-D.C., who headed the New York City Commission on Human Rights at the time, eventually investigated the allegations.
“This was a memorable case,” the congresswoman said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters.
“We found the kind of egregious discrimination that, frankly, I associated with my days in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee,” she added, referring to her earlier days as a civil rights activist.
She added that her office found so many complaints against Trump-owned buildings that they eventually took the issue to the Department of Justice.
In October 1973, and after 27-year-old Donald Trump had assumed the role as president of the family business, the Justice Department filed a civil rights case accusing the Trumps of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
The family settled with the federal government in June 1975 without admitting to any wrongdoing.
The Trumps signed an agreement prohibiting them from “discriminating against any person in the terms, conditions or priveleges of sale or rental of a dwelling.”
The Trumps were also ordered to “thoroughly acquaint themselves personally on a detailed basis” with the Fair Housing Act, and they were made to place ads stating specifically that minorities were welcome to seek housing at their properties.
On Tuesday, the Clinton camp rolled all these stories together to paint the GOP nominee as an out-and-out bigot.
“Long before Donald Trump ran for president, before he bankrupted casinos in Atlantic City and before he was a reality TV star on ‘The Apprentice,’ he was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for racial discrimination in housing in Brooklyn and Queens — and discrimination took place in other cities as well,” the Clinton team said in a press release announcing the new attack ad.
“Federal investigators were told that Trump employees would mark applications of prospective minority renters with ‘C’ for ‘colored’ and failed to rent to African-Americans,” the press statement added.
Clinton’s team then published a tweet highlighting the ad, with the simple caption, “My name is Mae Wiggins. I was denied an apartment in the Trump buildings based on the color of my skin.”
"My name is Mae Wiggins. I was denied an apartment in the Trump buildings based on the color of my skin." pic.twitter.com/ds8NkkV0T2— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 25, 2016
The Clinton campaign also circulated a list of reports underscoring Trump’s multiple legal run-ins with issues regarding housing discrimination.
The list, which was provided to media, included a Los Angeles Times report, titled, “As a young Donald Trump began his real estate career, he fought hard against allegations of racial bias,” a New York Times story, titled, “‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias” and a New York Daily News report titled, “EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump stayed silent when his dad said ‘I don’t rent to n——-s’ in rejecting black tenant’s bid for Queens apartment in 1963, ex-employee claims.”
The housing discrimination attack on Trump comes as Clinton and her allies continue to tear into the GOP nominee over the multiple allegations of sexual assault that have been brought against him. The Democratic nominee and her team are also hammering away at Trump for refusing to say recently whether he will accept the results of the Nov. 8 election.
