Donald Trump’s newest staff pick is a lot like the rest of them. According to news reports and lawsuits, Reed Cordish, Trump’s incoming White House adviser, hired white men to start trouble with black patrons of his family’s properties so that they could kick them out.

According to a scathing report in the Daily Beast, Cordish, who was picked to be an assistant to the president for intergovernmental and technology initiatives, “is an executive of the Cordish Companies, his family’s Baltimore, Md.-based real estate business, and the president of Entertainment Concepts Investors, a subsidiary that owns and manages bars, restaurants, and clubs throughout the country.”

Lawsuits viewed by the Daily Beast claim that ECI’s biggest holdings are clubs and bars in Kansas City, Mo.’s “Power and Light District,” which black residents have nicknamed “Power and White District.”

Dante Combs and Adam Williams sued Cordish in 2014 in a $5 million class action racial-discrimination case, claiming that Cordish-run establishments harassed and beat them in an effort to keep their clubs free of blacks. Cordish’s business won an initial ruling in a federal district court, but Combs and Williams are appealing the decision, the Daily Beast reports.

Christina Martinez, a floor manager at one of Cordish’s clubs, testified in the 2014 case that Reed Cordish used “urbans” or “Canadians” as code words for black patrons.

She also claimed that the club’s manager, Jake Miller, grabbed the DJ’s microphone and yelled, “Get that fucking nigger music off here.”

Miller also reportedly told William Whitlock, a black former Cordish employee, that he was upset with the number of black people who had been let into the club.

“He made the comment that if he ever saw this many niggers in the building again, he would chain the doors and burn it down with me inside,” Whitlock said, the Daily Beast reports. “He was embarrassed and horrified to see what we had done to his club.”

If black patrons were somehow let into the club, there was a system in place to assure that they would be promptly kicked out. It involved the use of someone referred to as the “rabbit,” according to testimony.

“A ‘rabbit’ was a white kid who got free drinks to go around the District, do whatever he wanted, so long as he singled out blacks and started confrontations with them,” Martinez said.

A former “rabbit,” Thomas Alexitch, said in a sworn affidavit that his job was to instigate altercations at the Cordish-owned Mosaic club.

Alexitch said his job was to “start altercations with certain groups of people. By starting these altercations, I ensured that these groups of people would be kicked out of the club,” the Daily Beast reports.

Alexitch was told which groups to target.

“I would estimate that 90 percent of the people I started altercations with were African Americans,” Alexitch said.

Alexitch said that he was paid in drinks and cash, and if the altercations became intense, he was given more money.

“Most nights I was paid between $50 and $100, but on nights when this would get particularly heated, I would get $125-$150,” he testified.

The Trump transition team denies all the allegations and told the New York Daily News that Cordish’s company was lauded for its civil rights work.

“The company has been nationally lauded for taking on the toughest urban redevelopments and revitalizing urban-cores,” a Trump spokesman told the News in a statement. “In fact, Cordish has been recognized from leading civil rights groups as a model company for inclusiveness.”

When the Daily Beast reached out to Cordish Companies for a statement regarding the 2014 claims of racially motivated attacks, the business responded only with a statement regarding Cordish’s appointment.

“It is a true honor for me to be appointed as an assistant to the president. The core foundation of the Cordish Companies was built upon an ethos of public service and a commitment to transforming American cities across the country. Accepting this position is in keeping with those values, and I am proud to serve our country in this capacity,” Cordish said in a statement.

For more information, please visit the source link below. You can read the DailyBeast.com article “New Trump Adviser’s Company Being Sued for Hiring White Men to Attack Black Patrons”.