For part of his life, he was a naturalized citizen of the United States, until he was stripped of his American citizenship for lying about his role in World War II, concealing his involvement in the murder of hundreds of Jews in a Romanian participation in the Holocaust.

A prominent affiliate of the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist organization also known as the Legionary Movement, Trifa played a part in provoking the Legionnaires' Rebellion of 1941.

After being singled out as a rebel by Ion Antonescu, Romania's Conducător and a competitor of the Iron Guard, he spent the final years of World War II in Nazi Germany, as a detainee with privileged status.

Beginning in 1975, his wartime activities came to the attention of the United States Department of Justice, and the subsequent inquiry made Trifa relinquish his American citizenship in 1980.

The scandal's ramifications came to involve several institutions, including the National Council of Churches, Radio Free Europe, West German law enforcement, and the Israeli and Portuguese governments, while allegations surfaced that Romania's secret police, the Securitate, was using the controversy to advance its own goals.

Trifa's first employment was with Oastea Domnului, being charged with managing its publishing house: he issued the movement's eponymous magazine, its other journal Lumina Satelor, and the books of his uncle Iosif.

In early 1941, the conflict for power turned into an Iron Guard-led failed rebellion and a pogrom against the Jewish population in Bucharest where over one hundred Jews and Romanians were massacred.

Known as the Legionnaires' Rebellion, the event was partly motivated by the killing of a German Reich resident and local Abwehr chief, Major Döring — which was probably accomplished with assistance from the British Intelligence Service.

[4] His text, which relied on the assumption that Döring had been killed by Greek agents and formed part of a Legionnaire press campaign,[4] read: ... the protectors and defenders of this Greek-origin assassin are: Eugen Cristescu, chief of the [Romanian] secret service and a former confidant of Armand Călinescu [the former Prime Minister and Iron Guard adversary, assassinated by the Legionnaries in 1939] and Alexandru Rioșanu, the man of the Jews and of the Greeks .... We demand the replacement of all Jew-turned [jidovite] persons inside the government.

[4] In early 1943, while in Buchenwald, Trifa was among the prominent Legionnaires who agreed to disavow Sima's policies (the group also included Vasile Iașinschi, Ilie Gârneață, Constantin Popovici, Dumitru Grozea, and Corneliu Georgescu).

[4] Ioanid, who described the Legionnaires' internment as a "bearable regime" in comparison to that of other prisoners in the same camps, noted that they were visited by high-ranking Nazi officials who warned them not to engage in any political activity.

[11] After Trifa was freed, he was briefly secretary to Metropolitan bishop Visarion Puiu in Vienna and then Paris, and, following the end of World War II, he was a professor of ancient history in Italy, at a Roman Catholic college.

[14] As early as 1957, Charles Kremer, a Romanian-born dentist and Jewish community activist, was involved in collecting evidence to have Trifa tried for war crimes in the American justice system.

[16] When focus shifted to his role in the 1941 Rebellion, Trifa denied his involvement,[8] despite being confronted with evidence (sent by the Romanian government),[6] including a photo of him in an Iron Guard uniform and texts of his pro-Nazi speeches and articles.

[10] When news of this refusal leaked to the Israeli press, a polemic was sparked between Hausner and Menachem Begin's executive, but the latter chose not to reconsider its earlier decision.

[7] Beginning in the late 1980s, Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former general in the communist secret police (the Securitate) who defected to the United States, claimed that Trifa had been the victim of a frameup engineered by his former colleagues.

[17] Based on evidence from her husband's Securitate file, she also described Bernard's mysterious 1981 death as an assassination, arguing that it formed the culmination of various failed attempts to silence him.