President-elect Donald Trump addressed the recent confession by former stripper and current murder convict, Crystal Mangum, who admitted this week to lying about being raped by three Duke lacrosse players in 2006.
Trump wrote a message on Truth Social early Saturday morning, lambasting Mangum for "destroying the lives" of the innocent men she accused.
"Woman admits to totally fabricating accusations in the horrible Duke Lacrosse Case. She destroyed the lives of these young men," Trump wrote.
Mangum's confession came on Thursday during an interview from her jail cell with the independent media outlet "Let's Talk With Kat."
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"I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn't, and that was wrong, and I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me," Mangum said. "[I] made up a story that wasn't true, because I wanted validation from people and not from God."
The former Duke players, David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, were declared innocent in 2007. The state attorney general’s office concluded there was no credible evidence that an attack had ever occurred, and its investigation found no DNA, witnesses or other evidence to confirm Mangum’s story.
However, the player's lives were severely affected, according to one of their lawyers.
One of the former players’ attorneys, Jim Cooney, told The Associated Press that Mangum’s allegations caused an "enormous tornado of destruction" for countless people involved, including the accused men, and that they were wrongfully vilified nationally as "racially motivated rapists."
CRYSTAL GAIL MANGUM: PROFILE OF THE DUKE RAPE ACCUSER
Other individuals who helped perpetuate the false allegations include Durham County district attorney Mike Nifong, who was the lead prosecutor in the case, and former Duke University president Richard Brodhead, who punished the team over the false allegations and canceled the rest of the 2006 season.
Nifong was later disbarred, and Brodhead apologized for the university's "failure to reach out" in a "time of extraordinary peril." Brodhead was then one of 30 individuals named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in 2007 by the players and stepped down in 2017.
Mangum can not be prosecuted for perjury now, because the statute of limitations on perjury charges in North Carolina only lasts around two years.
Mangum was later indicted on a charge of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny in March 2011. A year before that, she was convicted on misdemeanor charges after setting a fire that nearly torched her home with her three children inside. In a videotaped police interrogation, she told officers she had gotten into a confrontation with her boyfriend at the time, not Daye, and burned his clothes, smashed his car windshield and threatened to stab him.
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