Former Republican Presidential Candidate
David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, white supremacist and Louisiana politician, was arrested and taken into custody in Cologne on Friday, prior to a planned speech to a right-wing extremist group, German police said Monday.
The statement by the Cologne police department said that Duke, 61, is “obliged to leave German territory without delay.” In a message on his website, Duke said he had been released from jail and requested financial assistance from his followers to fight the deportation.
“To fight this case will cost a lot of money, time and effort,” he wrote.
The arrest appears to be tied to Duke’s expulsion from the Czech Republic in 2009, following his detention there on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, a crime in many European countries, including Germany. The Cologne police statement said that Duke “was not entitled to stay in Germany” because of a travel ban against him in another, unspecified European country.
Duke, a former neo-Nazi who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. presidency in 1988 and 1992, served a year in prison in 2003 and 2004 after pleading guilty to tax fraud and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from supporters to pay gambling debts.
Duke is actually one of the more honest Republicans. At least he doesn’t lie about his racism and objectives.
DRUDGE RETORT 