Was Donald Trump's Father in the KKK?

Donald Trump's support among far-right groups has followed him throughout his political career, the former president infamously dining with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes in 2022.

Trump, who is leading polls to become the 2024 Republican presidential candidate after barnstorming successes in Iowa and New Hampshire, repeatedly faced criticism for appearing friendly toward white supremacists and extremists during his presidency.

While it's not clear whether Trump's former associations and comments will impact his race for the White House, it appears the hype surrounding the Republican primaries has invited new scrutiny of his associations and connections with racist organizations and individuals.

One claim that appeared online this week concerned his late father, Fred Trump, who was accused of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

The post on X, formerly Twitter, by user @ReillyBelle57, on January 24, 2024, included a video of South Carolina senator and former Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott standing behind Donald Trump at Trump's recent New Hampshire rally.

User @ReillyBelle57 wrote alongside: "Does Tim Scott even realize Trump's Daddy was in the KKK and Trump despises Black People as much as his Daddy did? They both got arrested for not renting to Black people. What a loser."

Newsweek has contacted media representatives for Donald Trump via email for comment.

This post does not include any supporting source and there appears to be no immediate evidence that suggests Fred Trump was a member of the infamous white power group.

However, the claim may refer to an incident in 1927 when Trump's father was arrested at a KKK rally in Queens. The incident was picked up by news site Boing Boing in 2015. It cited a New York Times article from June 1927 saying that Fred Trump was named among seven men who were arraigned following a "free-for-all" between "1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen."

The article states that "Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Road, Jamaica, was discharged." A follow-up article by The Washington Post noted this address matched records from the 1930 census.

Further investigation by Vice in 2016 cited an article in the Long Island Daily Press, a clipping from which is no longer cited on Vice's site, that allegedly said all of the arrestees were "berobed marchers." Newsweek has been unable to verify the authenticity of this clipping. However, as Vice's report states, none of the articles prove that Fred Trump was a member of the Klan and he could have been a bystander.

There is nothing in the original New York Times report that suggests he was and, as stated, Fred Trump was discharged after his arrest.

A 2019 academic paper, published in the Journal of Urban History, which discussed Fred Trump's arrest in detail and the KKK's presence in Queens at the time, also notes that non-Klan observers were arrested too, adding that the lack of available evidence makes it difficult to conclude "whether Trump was discharged because the police realized they made a mistake, whether they decided his comparatively minor violation was not worth pursuing further, or some other set of circumstances altogether."

Donald Trump has denied his father's arrest or involvement in the rally.

In any case, the allegation that Fred Trump was a member of the Klan is supported by no other substantive and immediately available evidence.

While the KKK did not formally endorse Donald Trump during the 2020 election, the organization's former leader David Duke did and suggested Fox News host Tucker Carlson should be his running mate.

Trump rejected Duke's support in 2016, stating the white supremacist was a "bad person who I disavowed on numerous occasions over the years," according to PolitiFact.

The second part of @ReillyBelle57's post is a reference to a 1973 lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against Donald Trump, his father and Trump Management over alleged racial discrimination at Trump housing developments in New York. The case was later settled with no admission of guilt, Trump has said.