Donald Trump Dad: The Criminal History of Trump’s Father

By Elena Gilbert On Apr 7, 2023

On Tuesday, former president Donald Trump surrendered to New York police on charges related to the 2016 probe into hush money payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels. It’s not the first time a patriarch has been detained in the Trump family.

Fred Trump, Trump’s father, was detained twice: once in 1927 during a Ku Klux Klan riot and once in 1976 for code violations at a Maryland property he owned.

In the latter case, Fred Trump, a real estate mogul, was detained in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a wealthy majority-Black county located just outside of Washington, D.C. Prince George’s County is currently noted for its group of Black women in leadership roles.

In 2016, Donald Trump admitted to The Washington Post that he was unaware of his father’s 1976 arrest. Trump was 30 years old and employed by his father’s business then. On September 30, 1976, The Post reported:

The New York owner of an apartment project in Seat Pleasant was arrested in Prince George’s County yesterday for not complying with five citations for housing code violations filed against the project nine months ago.

Fred C. Trump, 70, was taken into custody at Gregory Estates, a 504-unit complex he owns at 6918 George Palmer Highway. Code officials said they surprised Trump with the warrants after he had flown down from New York, ostensibly to discuss the problems concerning his apartment complex.

According to C.H. Bennett, chief of inspection and enforcement for the county housing department, Trump was cited for the violations that include broken windows, “rotted” (defective) rain gutters, and the failure to install fire extinguishers, following a routine inspection last January.

Following a number of telephone discussions with Trump, Bennett said, he decided to sign the warrants, which were served during a scheduled meeting with Trump at Gregory Estates yesterday morning.

Joseph T. Healey, the county’s housing inspector supervisor, said arrests are rarely made for code violations. “We probably haven’t issued four arrest warrants in the past five years,” Healey said.

“All we want is compliance … (and) as long as an effort is being made, we’ll work with the owner.” Bennett described the New Yorker as “a little upset, to put it mildly,” at the arrest.

Trump was released by sheriff’s deputies on a $1,000 bond and left immediately for New York. He could not be reached.

In a telephone interview yesterday afternoon, Irving Eskinazi, vice president of the “Trump concerns,” in New York, said the company has had “problems” with Gregory Estates for the past five years.

“We bought the project 15 years ago,” Eskinazi said, “and for the first 10 it was extremely successful.” Lately, however, “there has been a very serious change in the area. Low-income people started moving in.”

“We’ve spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, and as soon as we do, it gets ripped up again,” he said. “It’s hearbreaking.”
Trump, Eskinazi said, “is a fine gentleman. He shouldn’t even be going to a project like this.” County officials, he said, should know better than to “try and louse around with Trump’s reputation.”

Fred Trump had already been arrested. According to a newspaper account at the time, he had been detained at a violent Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Queens in 1927 on suspicion of “refusing to withdraw from a march when told to do so.”

When he was arrested, he was 21 years old; Donald, his son, would not be born for another 19 years. When the arrest was discovered in 2016, The Post’s Philip Bump wrote:

On Memorial Day 1927, brawls erupted in New York led by sympathizers of the Italian fascist movement and the Ku Klux Klan. In the fascist fight, which took place in the Bronx, two Italian men were killed by anti-fascists.

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In Queens, 1,000 white-robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica neighborhood, eventually spurring an all-out brawl in which seven men were arrested.

One of those arrested was Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Rd. in Jamaica. This is Donald Trump’s father. Trump had a brother named Fred, but he wasn’t born until more than a decade later.

The Fred Trump at Devonshire Road was the Fred C. Trump who lived there with his mother, according to the 1930 Census.

The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that “Native-born Protestant Americans” were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.”

“Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” it continued, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.”

It’s not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the “near-riot of the parade,” all of whom were represented by the same lawyers.

When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father’s arrest. “He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened.

This is nonsense and it never happened,” he said to the Daily Mail. “This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”

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