Trump misleads on Zarutska suspect’s release in attack on Cooper

Cooper’s administration did accept a genuine pandemic settlement ten days later, on 25 February. It followed a civil-rights lawsuit over infection risks in prisons and preliminary court orders. The agreement required 3,500 “early reentries” over a 180-day period, using sentence credits, confinement outside prison, and parole or supervision decisions. Qualifying decisions made from 15 February could count towards the target. [3]

That provision allowed the department to count Brown’s earlier supervision decision towards its quota. Being included on the settlement list was not the same as being freed because of the agreement. [7]

Even if the hearing officer had revoked Brown’s supervision, he could have been returned to prison for approximately seven months, until 20 September 2021, the department said. Whatley’s campaign told PolitiFact that choosing to leave him free nevertheless reflected Cooper’s approach to public safety. [7]

Brown was released again after a separate January 2025 arrest for repeatedly calling 911. AP reported that he was freed without bail on a promise to return to court; the misdemeanour carried a maximum four-month sentence. That was a new criminal case, not the implementation of the Covid settlement. [8]

What the figure 25 counts

In a separate Washington Reporter interview, Whatley used 25 to count people on the wider release list: “25, including Decarlos Brown Jr., have been re-arrested for murder.” He referred separately to “80 plus” people with previous murder convictions. [5]

Whatley also invoked 25 families with an “empty seat at the dinner table”. But the interview did not provide a case-by-case victim tally or identify the 25 people rearrested as members of the smaller group with earlier murder convictions. An arrest count is not, by itself, a count of victims or proven offences. [5]

Trump’s post supplies no case list connecting his precise figures of 83 released “murderers” and 25 people killed. Whatley’s related tally does not establish that connection. This leaves the wider allegation unsubstantiated by that tally, rather than demonstrating that either number was invented. [1] [5]

The programme’s safety record

The failure of the Brown allegation does not erase adverse outcomes after other releases. The Assembly, citing North Carolina’s sentencing commission, reported that 48% of 1,180 settlement releasees between February and June 2021 were rearrested within two years — a higher rate than for ordinary releases that year. In the study’s most serious offence category, the rates were 51% for settlement releases and 31% for ordinary releases. [9]

Those figures concern a defined subset, not everyone on the settlement list. They count arrests, not necessarily violent offences or convictions, and the comparison alone does not isolate the effect of early release. [9]

The Assembly’s own analysis found that more than 90% of roughly 3,000 people actually released early would have been out by the end of 2021 anyway. A later killing alone therefore does not show that the person would otherwise still have been imprisoned. [9]

The publication also reported a case within the early-release window: Calvin Locklear was released on 21 May 2021 and fatally shot a man a month later, before his previously projected release date of 12 August. That case raises a substantive question about an individual release decision. [9]

Neither the higher rearrest rates nor that reported case changes Brown’s release history: the Covid settlement did not free him. And Whatley’s arrest tally does not establish Trump’s broader claim that 83 other released prisoners killed 25 people.