Tell the truth, Rep. Jeffries, and clear your character

OK, it’s not George Santos-level fabrication, but House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries ought to get his story straight on his own past. 

Quick rewind: The Brooklyn rep’s uncle is infamous City College prof Leonard Jeffries, who posited vile, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the 1990s, alleging that Jews financed the slave trade while modern Jewish film executives plotted to keep black people down. He also compared the Chosen to skunks. 

Rep. Jeffries, questioned on the issue in 2013, played demure.

He had only “a vague recollection” of the fracas and claimed to be unaware of the content of his relative’s most controversial speeches. 

Turns out this is pure hokum.  

As a Binghamton University senior in 1992, Jeffries defended not only his uncle but notorious Jew-hater and racist Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan in the student paper, the Pipe Dream.

The paper also reported on his press-conference remarks as head of the Black Student Union defending the BSU’s invitation to his uncle to speak after it came under fire. 

And in the BSU paper, The Vanguard, young Hakeem again defended his uncle against the “White media.”

Look, it’s clear Hakeem Jeffries is no slavering anti-Semite, as his close relations with New York’s Jewish communities demonstrate. 

He was a kid when this happened. People grow and change.  

But his years of flat-out denials as an adult around his involvement are demonstrably dishonest.

Rep. Jeffries, come clean and move beyond this. 

It’s politically smart and the right thing to do.