After reporting this to the Human Rights Commission, Morse returned to the apartment building and was offered a lease, at which time an African American man previously denied entered the office with a city human rights commissioner.
The building superintendent apparently responded:
"Well, I'm only doing what my boss told me to do, I am not allowed to rent to black tenants."
The commissioner's demand that the superintendent take him to the superintendent's boss led right to Trump Management.
The federal investigation uncovered the coding system Trump employees were required to use, such as "No. 9" or "C" for "colored."
Former Trump Management staffer Harry Schefflin told government investigators he was ordered to rent only to "Jews and executives," and discourage African Americans.
Building supervisors were instructed to inflate rental rates for African American applicants and keep "a sham lease and check to be shown to black applicants."
Washington Post writer Michael Kranish, who co-wrote the book Trump Revealed, stated that the DOJ considered the case "one of the most significant race bias cases" at the time, explaining:
"They [Trump Management] signed what was called a consent order. Trump fought the case for two years...He says it was very easy, but actually he fought the case for two years."
The Trumps accepted the first settlement offer that the federal government offered without admitting guilt, Kranish explained:
"[The settlement] required the Trumps to place ads in newspapers saying that they welcomed black applicants. It said that the Trumps would familiarize themselves with the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination. So it also specifically said they don't admit wrongdoing, but they did have to take several measures that the Trumps had fought for two years not to take."
Although not admitting guilty, Trump Management entered into a consent decree requiring it to implement safeguards to ensure apartments were rented without racial, religious, gender, and nationality prejudice.
Arguing against the charge of discrimination, in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, Trump claimed:
"What we didn't do was rent to welfare cases, white or black."
As The Daily Beast originally reported in 2015, before Donald was the Republican nominee:
"The ugly details of this early clash with the Department of Justice shed light on alleged systemic discrimination at the heart of the Trump real estate empire. If there is any truth to these allegations, these court documents may provide insight into the early business practices of the candidate who is now committed to blocking all Muslims entry into our nation, and who claims to be "the least racist person on Earth."
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