Fox News Guest Says Elizabeth Warren's Ancestors 'Rounded Up Cherokees for the Trail of Tears'

Fox News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed without evidence that Senator Elizabeth Warren's ancestors "rounded up Cherokees for the Trail of Tears," The Hill reported.

"Genealogists have gone back through her family tree and found that her ancestors were actually part of the Tennessee militia that rounded up Cherokees for the Trail of Tears," Campos-Duffy said Tuesday while appearing on Fox News.

She did not provide a source for the claim that the Massachusetts senator's relatives had participated in the forced relocation of thousands of Cherokees, which killed 4,000 Native Americans, according to PBS.

Breitbart News ran an article in 2012 titled "Elizabeth Warren Ancestor Rounded Up Cherokees for Trail of Tears." The brutal forced relocation campaign, in which the government took land east of the Mississippi River from the Cherokee nation and required Native Americans to march west to present-day Oklahoma, occurred in 1838 and 1839.

The comments by Campos-Duffy came the day after Warren released results of a DNA test conducted by Stanford University professor Carlos Bustamante, who said the analysis "strongly support[s]" the senator's claims of Native American heritage, The Hill reported.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly disparaged Warren by referring to her as "Pocahontas" and questioning her claims that she has Native American lineage. In July, offered to pay $1 million to a charity of Warren's choice if she could prove her ancestry.

"I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian," he said at a campaign rally in Montana. "I have a feeling she will say 'no.'"

On Monday, the president claimed he never made the offer. "I didn't say that. You'd better read it again," he said. Trump later said "I'll only do it if I can test her personally," leading Warren to call him "creepy."

Campos-Duffy called Warren's decision to publicize her ancestry "disastrous." The Fox contributor was just the latest in a range of conservative figures, including Senator Lindsey Graham, who have quipped about the DNA test.

"I've been told that my grandmother was part Cherokee Indian, it may all be just talk, but you're gonna find out in a couple of weeks because I'm gonna take this test," Graham said Tuesday on Fox and Friends. He said he thought he could "beat" Warren in the amount of Cherokee heritage in his DNA.

"It doesn't matter if Fake-ajawea is one percent Indian or ninety percent Indian. DNA should never matter except to physicians treating inherited illnesses," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said, according to Media Matters.

Correction: a previous version of this article incorrectly stated the years that the Trail of Tears took place.