What was Donald Trump’s later response when the Central Park Five were exonerated in 2002 and 2014?
Executive summary
Donald Trump did not retract his 1989 stance after the Central Park Five were exonerated in 2002 and again after their 2014 settlement; instead he repeatedly insisted they were guilty, called the city’s $41 million settlement “a disgrace,” and declined to apologize for his earlier actions [1] [2] [3]. His post-exoneration remarks included op-eds, tweets and television comments asserting culpability, and his legal team later defended those statements as protected opinion amid a defamation suit [4] [5] [6].
1. The 2002 exoneration and Trump’s immediate posture
When convictions were vacated in 2002 after Matias Reyes confessed and DNA evidence corroborated that confession, Donald Trump did not publicly recant his earlier calls for harsh penalties or apologize for the full‑page 1989 ads he had taken out urging reinstatement of the death penalty; reporting shows he maintained faith in the original prosecutions and his prior public posture [7] [2] [4].
2. The 2014 settlement and a public rebuke: “a disgrace”
After New York City agreed to a roughly $41 million settlement with the five men in 2014, Trump wrote an op‑ed for the New York Daily News calling the settlement “a disgrace,” arguing that settling did not equal innocence and suggesting the men “do not exactly have the pasts of angels,” a direct rejection of the city’s decision to compensate the exonerated men [4] [8] [3].
3. Social media and soundbites: continued insistence on guilt
Across social media and interviews, Trump repeated versions of the same claim—that the men had “admitted” guilt—despite their convictions having been vacated, tweeting and answering reporters in ways that reinforced his long‑standing belief in their culpability and questioning details of the settlement such as legal fees [1] [5] [2].
4. Trump’s defense in court and the defamation litigation context
When the exonerated men later sued Trump for defamation over his repeated statements, his legal team argued those remarks were protected expressions of opinion and that he was recounting his 1989 thinking; a federal judge nevertheless refused to dismiss the suit, rejecting an early attempt to end the case on those grounds [9] [6] [10].
5. The enduring pattern: refusal to apologize and political calculation
Multiple outlets and timelines document that Trump has consistently refused to apologize for his role in amplifying the case—buying newspaper ads in 1989, pressing for severe punishment then, and in subsequent decades standing by those positions—even as the case became widely cited as an emblem of wrongful conviction and racial injustice [11] [12] [7]. Reporting suggests this posture served both as a personal defense of his original instincts and as political signaling about law‑and‑order credentials, a reading advanced by observers at The Guardian and other outlets [7].
6. Alternative viewpoints and tensions in characterization
Supporters of Trump or some prosecutors have argued his later comments aimed to describe his state of mind in 1989 and to defend detectives’ work, framing his statements as opinion rather than factual misrepresentation; critics contend that persisting in assertions of guilt after exoneration perpetuated harm and misinformation, a tension now playing out in court [6] [9] [10].
7. What the public record shows — and what it doesn’t
The public record in the cited reporting shows repeated refusals to apologize and continued public claims of guilt by Trump after both the 2002 exoneration and the 2014 settlement, plus his labeling of the settlement as “a disgrace” and legal defenses that his speech is protected; the sources do not, however, provide any verified instance where Trump issued a formal apology or retraction that acknowledged the five men’s innocence [4] [3] [13].