TRENTON -- Ever since Donald Trump announced a year ago that he was running for president, he's consistently faced sharp criticism for his statements about Hispanics and Muslims.

In the last few weeks alone, the presumptive Republican nominee has been called a racist for comments about a judge's "Mexican heritage" and a bigot for reiterating in the wake of the Orlando shooting that the U.S. should fight terrorism by temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country.

In both cases, Trump has been under attack for using a broad brush to describe a group of people and making unsubstantiated charges.

He's dismissed all the allegations, saying in December: "I'm the least racist person you have ever met." And he does not back away from his claims.

But such allegations aren't new.

Two decades ago, Trump faced a similar backlash for remarks he made about another ethnic group when he was an Atlantic City casino owner.

The billionaire businessman was accused of smearing American Indian tribes as he fought to keep them from opening gambling halls north of New Jersey that he believed would threaten his three Atlantic City gambling halls, as well as one he planned to build in Connecticut.

In 1993, Trump told a U.S. House subcommittee that "organized crime is rampant" on Indian reservations -- an assertion challenged by others at the hearing.

And in 2000, he secretly funded ads against a Catskills casino that, according to reports at the time, declared, "The St. Regis Mohawk Indian record of criminal activity is well documented."

Like today, the real estate mogul was accused of making unsubstantiated charges by using "people have told me" as a source, and professed love for those he was targeting.

"Nobody likes Indians as much as Donald Trump," he told the subcommittee.

Trump was one of many New Jersey casino owners concerned about the threat posed by nearby Indian gambling operations at the time, said Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.

"Because it was the beginning of the competitive spiral that robbed Atlantic City of its East Coast monopoly, it was in their interest to fight back against it, but what was going to be the principled argument against it?" said Simon, author of the 2004 book "Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America."

The fear was legitimate: Four casinos have closed in Atlantic City in recent years amid increasing competition from neighboring states, including a pair of Indian tribe-owned gaming halls in Connecticut: Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.

At an October 1993 hearing of the House Natural Resources subcommittee on Native American affairs, Trump testified that Indians couldn't keep organized crime out of their operations, threatening the entire gambling industry.

"The mob is going into the casinos, and what they are doing is, they are going into the Indian casinos because that is where the money is but also that is where the lack of enforcement is," Trump said at the time. "An Indian chief is going to tell Joey Killer to please get off his reservation? It's unbelievable to me."

House Natural Resources Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) told Trump he had never heard "more irresponsible testimony" during his 19 years on the panel.

"You have cast upon the Indian nations a blanket indictment that organized crime is rampant on their reservations," he told Trump.

"For whatever reason, you have a closed mind," Trump told Miller.

"No, Mr. Trump," Miller responded. "I have a closed mind against evidence that is not substantiated. I have closed mind about statements that are made about other people in generalities."

When pressed about his sources, Trump told the House panel: "People know it, people talk about it."

Also at the hearing, Timothy Wapato, who was executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association, which represents tribal gambling operations, called the organized crime allegation "a smokescreen" for efforts by commercial casinos to quash competition from Indian gambling and get federal lawmakers to pass legislation to help them do so.

"Congress must not allow itself to be used to implement the racist agenda of a few greedy commercial gambling tycoons,'' he said, describing such legislation as the "Donald Trump Protection Act."

Seven years later, an ad campaign against a proposed St. Regis Mohawk casino in Monticello, N.Y., ostensibly was funded by a nonprofit group, the New York Institute for Law and Society.

But it was secretly bankrolled by Trump, according to the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying, now the Joint Commission on Public Ethics. The ads attacked the St. Regis Mohawk for a "record of criminal activity."

To settle the case, Trump and his allies agreed to pay $250,000. They also agreed to spend an additional $50,000 to publish a statement acknowledging that their ad campaign "did not disclose that they were paid for by Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc." In addition, the statement said they "apologize if anyone was misled concerning the production and funding of the lobbying effort."

Also involved was Roger Stone, a current Trump adviser.

Aimee Benedict, a spokeswoman for the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, declined to comment. The casino never was built.

"Though his tactics were abhorrent, Trump was rather prescient that cannibalization of the gaming market would be enormously damaging to the casino industry in Atlantic City," said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University.

"But of course, now we see that this pattern of duplicity, with Trump repeatedly claiming to have universal affection for a group while simultaneously smearing them, is one he has long practiced," Harrison added.

Asked why he went after the Indian tribes, Trump responded through spokeswoman Hope Hicks: "To help New Jersey, where your dying newspaper is based."

Trump criticized the tribes as recently as 2011, when he told publisher Steve Forbes, himself an unsuccessful GOP presidential candidate, that Indian casinos were a "scam."

"They have less Indian blood maybe than we do," he said. "And they're running reservations and I'm saying to myself, 'They don't look like Indians.'"

Nicholas Amato, the former Essex County executive who was head of the New Jersey Casino Redevelopment Authority in the early 1990s and later became a vice president at Trump's casino company, defended Trump against charges of racism, noting that the businessman once helped fund two Connecticut tribes.

"To suggest he's anti-Indian is absolutely untrue," Amato said. "That's ridiculous. You don't sponsor an Indian tribe if you're anti-Indian."

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.