Donald Trump continues to prove what a misguided and miserable president he would make after insisting that the Central Park Five were guilty, despite their being exonerated by DNA in New York City’s horrific 1989 Central Park jogger rape case.
“They admitted they were guilty,” Trump said to CNN in a statement.
“The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same,” he continued.
Four young black men and one Latino, all teens at the time of their arrests, were charged with and convicted of the brutal rape of a white banker. During the time of their conviction, Trump took out a full-page ad in four of the city’s papers calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty, NBC News reports. In 2002 all five were cleared of the rape after DNA evidence was presented and another man confessed to the assault.
In 2014, New York paid the five $41 million in a settlement regarding their ordeal, NBC reports.