President Trump doubled down on his controversial stance on the Central Park Five, a group of black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of an assault on a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989, USA Today reports. Trump was asked by American Urban Radio Networks reporter April Ryan whether he’d apologize to the men for taking out newspaper ads calling for their execution. All five were exonerated in 2002 after Matias Reyes confessed to raping the woman, a statement backed up by DNA evidence.
At first, Trump was defensive, asking Ryan, “Why would you bring that question up now? It’s an interesting time to bring it up.” The reporter responded that there were “movies and everything about them,” referring a new Netflix TV series about the Central Park Five. “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt,” Trump said. “If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case. So we’ll leave it at that.” Fairstein, the top New York City sex crimes prosecutor at the time, has come under scrutiny in the Netflix series, entitled, “When They See Us.” Trump spent $85,000 to take out a newspaper ad calling for the teenagers’ executions.
1 Comment
Very strange reporting.
Trump only asked for the death penalty for those who murdered, which was known not to include the CP5, both then and now.
For those who vetted the CP5 case, it is easy to see why Trump would not apologize.