President Trump flew to Gastonia on Wednesday night, September 16, to campaign for Michael Whatley, the Republican running for North Carolina's open U.S. Senate seat. Trump called North Carolina cities "blood-soaked killing fields."
Whatley has built his campaign on that idea — that his opponent, former Governor Roy Cooper, made the state dangerous. The centerpiece is a 2021 legal settlement under which 3,500 people were released early from state custody.
WRAL's PolitiFact reporter went through the claims the two men made on that stage. The central ones do not hold up.
The settlement came out of a court case Cooper was on track to lose, not a policy he chose
Whatley describes the 3,500 releases as a deal Cooper signed and says he never would have signed it. Here is what actually produced it.
In April 2020, the ACLU of North Carolina and a coalition of civil rights groups sued Cooper's administration, arguing it was failing to protect prisoners from COVID-19. In June 2020, a North Carolina Superior Court judge ruled the plaintiffs were likely to win and ordered both sides to reach a solution to keep the state's 300,000-plus prisoners safe. Five state prisoners had already died of the virus. In December the judge appointed a special master to oversee the negotiations.
The February 25, 2021 settlement came out of that. Cooper has said that if he had refused to settle, the plaintiffs could have pushed for even more prisoners to be released — which is what a court that has already said you are losing tends to produce.
There is also a comparison Whatley does not make. During the same pandemic, in his first term, Trump released roughly 13,000 people from federal prison — nearly four times as many.
The murder
The hardest version of Whatley's claim is about Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian who came to Charlotte in 2022 after Russia invaded her country, and who was killed in August 2025. Trump said at the rally: "Cooper let DeCarlos Brown out." Whatley has blamed Cooper too.
WRAL rated that wrong, and the timeline is the reason.
DeCarlos Brown Jr. pleaded guilty to robbery with a dangerous weapon in 2014 and was released from prison on September 20, 2020. The settlement was signed February 25, 2021 — five months later. State officials have said directly that Brown was not released because of the settlement and that it had no bearing on whether he was free in 2025.
Brown's name does appear in the settlement documents. He qualified to be counted on the list because he had a post-release hearing on February 15, 2021, ten days before the agreement was signed. He was one of many prisoners already out who still met the criteria to be counted.
That is the whole of the connection: a man already out of prison for five months appears on a list. It is being used to say a governor let a killer loose.
"They went right back to their life of crime"
Whatley's own line at the rally was this: "And what do you think happened as soon as those criminals were back on the street? They went right back to their life of crime."
The claim traces to a May report in the New York Post saying at least 18 of the people released early were later charged with killing someone. WRAL pulled the court and prison records for those 18 and found that a majority of them were either already out of prison before the settlement was signed, or would have been out anyway when they were accused — settlement or no settlement.
Republicans who control the North Carolina General Assembly announced a committee earlier this year to investigate the settlement. As of this reporting, the committee has not met or produced a report.
The National Guard claim
Whatley also said of the 2020 protests: "Did he call in the National Guard to put down those riots? No."
Cooper did. On May 31, 2020, he authorized 450 National Guard members to deploy to Charlotte, Raleigh and other cities if needed. North Carolina was one of at least 15 states to call out the Guard after George Floyd's murder.
When PolitiFact asked, Whatley's spokesman shifted the claim: the complaint is really that Cooper did not do it sooner. That is a different sentence than the one Whatley said on stage, and the one he said on stage was a flat no.
What Whatley got right
One claim checked out. Whatley said Cooper "vetoed legislation to tell our sheriffs that they have to honor ICE detainers." That is accurate — Cooper vetoed such bills in 2019 and 2022, and a third in 2024 that the legislature then overrode into law.
We note it because the rest of the record should be read against it. When Whatley makes a claim he can support, the fact-checkers say so.
Crime in North Carolina is falling
The frame under all of this is that North Carolina has become "one of the most violent" states. State and federal data do not say that.
The State Bureau of Investigation reported 388.4 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2024 — a 4.3% decrease from the year before. North Carolina's homicide rate was 7.6 per 100,000, down 9.2%. Both are above the national averages, and both are falling. Federal data show 18 other states with higher violent crime rates.
Violent crime in North Carolina fell in every year of Cooper's second term as governor, and has kept falling under his Democratic successor, Josh Stein.
This is not the first killing pinned on Cooper that didn't check out
In August we wrote about a website called The North Carolinian, which presents itself as "Independent Journalism for North Carolina." Popular Information found it is fully controlled by the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC backing Whatley's campaign. Its unbylined August 21 article blamed Cooper for a murder — and never mentioned that the killing happened in South Carolina.
The Gastonia rally is the same move with a real venue and a real candidate on the stage.
It is also not the only Whatley claim this year that the government's own numbers contradict. He has said grocery, gas and housing prices are all down and that "there is no inflation" — while the federal price index showed groceries rising 2.4% across 2025.
What the record shows
At a Trump rally in Gastonia on September 16, Michael Whatley told North Carolina voters that Roy Cooper released 3,500 prisoners who "went right back to their life of crime," and blamed Cooper for the killing of Iryna Zarutska. The man charged in that killing was released from prison on September 20, 2020 — five months before the settlement Whatley blames was signed — and state officials say the settlement had nothing to do with it. WRAL's review of the 18 cases behind the "life of crime" claim found most of those people were already out, or would have been out anyway. Whatley also said Cooper never called in the National Guard in 2020; Cooper authorized 450 Guard members to deploy if needed on May 31, 2020. Meanwhile North Carolina's violent crime rate fell 4.3% in 2024 and its homicide rate fell 9.2%, with 18 states ranking worse.
Source
WRAL, "'Blood-soaked killing fields': Fact-checking Trump and Whatley's claims about Cooper and crime in NC", by Paul Specht, PolitiFact reporter. Photo via WRAL.
