What exactly did Trump write in his 2014 New York Daily News op‑ed about the Central Park Five?

1. What the piece said, in his own words

The clearest quotations reported across multiple outlets show Trump writing that the settlement of the Central Park jogger case “is a disgrace,” adding that “Settling doesn’t mean innocence,” and advising readers to “Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts,” while noting “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels” ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Reporting also records Trump asking rhetorically, “What about the other people who were brutalized that night, in addition to the jogger?” — language meant to broaden the piece’s focus from the single rape case to a narrative of citywide criminality ^[1].

2. How the op‑ed framed the settlement and guilt

The op‑ed framed the city’s payment not as compensation for wrongful conviction but as an improper reward, calling the $40–41 million settlement “a disgrace” and implying the exonerated men remained culpable despite vacated convictions and the later confession and DNA match by another man ^{[1] [2] [3]}. By urging readers to consult detectives and emphasizing alleged prior misconduct, the column presented the settlement as a reversal of justice rather than a response to proven failures in the original prosecutions ^{[2] [1]}.

3. Context left out by the op‑ed and by some later accounts

Contemporaneous and later reporting notes the legal and evidentiary history absent from Trump’s argument: the five were convicted in 1990 after confessions that many later said were coerced, their convictions were vacated in 2002 after Matias Reyes confessed and DNA linked him to the assault, and New York settled a civil suit in 2014 for roughly $41 million ^{[2] [1]}. The op‑ed did not accept that sequence as exculpatory; it instead reiterated suspicions of guilt — a stance critics say ignored the basis for the exonerations and the reasoning behind the city’s settlement ^{[1] [6]}.

4. Subsequent use of the op‑ed in public debate and litigation

The 2014 Daily News column has been repeatedly cited in news coverage and legal filings as evidence that Trump continued to assert the five were guilty after their exoneration; courts and reporting have referenced the editorial among tweets, debate statements, and prior ads when considering defamation claims brought by the men ^{[4] [5]}. Coverage of the op‑ed sits alongside reminders of Trump’s 1989 full‑page ads calling for the death penalty — material critics argue amplifies the op‑ed’s impact on public perception ^{[7] [8]}.

5. Competing narratives and source perspectives

Sources differ in emphasis: outlets such as Time and Newsweek reproduce direct quotes from the op‑ed and stress Trump’s repeated description of the settlement as a “disgrace,” while The Guardian and other commentators highlight the lasting racial and political fallout and characterize Trump’s posture as inflammatory ^{[1] [3] [8]}. Some defenses offered by Trump and his legal team frame his 2014 writing as opinion rooted in his 1989 views rather than provably false statements of fact; plaintiffs in litigation counter that those opinions carried false factual assertions that harmed the exonerated men ^{[4] [5]}.

6. Reporting limits and what cannot be established from the cited sources

The sourced reporting reliably reproduces key sentences from the op‑ed but does not supply the full original text in every snippet, and the exact placement and broader rhetorical structure of every line can vary between outlets’ summaries and quotations ^{[1] [3] [2]}. Therefore, the description above is confined to the phrases and paraphrases that multiple reputable sources attribute to Trump’s June 2014 New York Daily News piece ^{[1] [3] [2]}.