The FBI investigated Trump's apartments for racial discrimination in the 1970s.

Back in 1973, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division filed a lawsuit against Trump Management Company, Donald Trump, and his dad Fred Trump for systemically preventing Black and Puerto Rican people from renting apartments on their properties. The Bureau’s FOIA website recently published nearly 400 pages from that investigation, which includes interviews with folks — from tenants to management — as a result of the probe. The Trumps settled the litigation with the FBI two years later.

Part of the settlement’s terms meant that the Trumps didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing, but it doesn’t take much convincing to believe they were acting racist. Even if we don’t consider that his dad was the racist landlord loathed and memorialized by Woody Guthrie, some of the FBI’s evidence has enough damning info to show why the Trumps wanted to avoid a DOJ-issued a definitive finding. Take this 1974 statement from a former doorman at a Trump building on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, for example.

A screenshot of the doorman’s statement from BuzzFeed’s legal editor Chris Geidner (link)

While employed in this capacity I was supervised by an individual known to me as [redacted] who was employed by Trump Management Corporation as superintendent at 265037 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, New York. [Redacted] told me that if a black person came to 265037 Ocean Parkway and inquired about an apartment for rent, and he, that is, [redacted] was not there at the time, that I should tell him that the rent was twice as much as it really was, in order that he could not afford the apartment.

And note this other juicy tidbit from The Hill:

However, one employee told investigators that he or she had been specifically directed by the elder Trump to screen applicants and not “rent to blacks” and to steer them to other buildings. “I asked Fred Trump what his policy was regarding minorities and he said it was absolutely against the law to discriminate. At a later time during my two weeks at [one Trump building], Fred Trump told me not to rent to blacks,” said the unnamed employee, who was eventually fired. “[Trump] also wanted me to get rid of the blacks that were in the building by telling them cheap housing was available for them at only $500 down payment, which Trump would offer to pay himself. Trump didn’t tell me where this housing was located,” he said. The employee also noted that he or she thought that the rental office often wrote codes on the top of rental applications to distinguish between black and white applicants.

Let’s be real. Discrimination is encoded into this guy’s blood. Trump’s racism has been evident for quite a while because he just can’t keep his mouth shut. POLITICO reports:

Donald Trump denied any racial discrimination, but said his managers tried to weed out certain kinds of tenants. “What we didn’t do was rent to welfare cases, white or black," Trump wrote in a 1987 book.

The investigation is a great example of how systemic discrimination happens. A lot of people were not aware of discrimination — hell, some Black and other people of color were tenants on some of Trump’s properties. But these facts don’t negate the overarching discrimination that was institutionalized by the people in charge. For discrimination to work, it can’t happen out in the open. It’s through scattered whisperings and reading between the lines in how the bosses talk that sets the stage for keeping out people considered “lesser” because of who they are.

The findings corroborate with a previous in-depth article by the Washington Post about the investigation. You can read “Inside the government’s racial bias case against Donald Trump’s company, and how he fought it” here.