An undercover video of soft-on-crime North Carolina Democrat Senate candidate Roy Cooper shows him repeatedly refusing to apologize to families of murder victims tied to his mass prison release.
The former two-term governor again lied on camera about the reason thousands of criminals were able to walk out of prisons in 2021.
The video shared by conservative X user Matt Van Swol shows a nearly 90-second interaction between Cooper and an unnamed person at an event. Breitbart News was able to match the time stamp to a September 2 campaign rally in Cabarrus County, a fast-growing suburban area outside of Charlotte.
In the video, Cooper is asked what he would say to the hundreds of victims of violent crimes committed and responds, “Look, we followed the court order. The state followed the court order to have those inmates released and it was critical that the state follow the court order.”
This often-repeated explanation is a lie, because it is Cooper himself who agreed to the order, making him the only governor in the country who signed a legally binding document. Democrat governors in Colorado, Illinois, and New Jersey all fought similar release lawsuits.
Cooper then says Republican opponent Michael Whatley has lied about the details, but did not point to any factual evidence.
The unnamed person in the video then asks Cooper what he would say to those victims. Cooper again lies and says he did not sign the order, then adds, “anyone who has that situation, is in a terrible, terrible situation, I pray for them and have sat with many victims’ families.”
WATCH — Former RNC Chairman: Roy Cooper is “the Worst Governor in the History of North Carolina”:
The unnamed person asks Cooper twice more if he has apologized, after which he repeats a debunked campaign talking point of saying he prosecuted violent criminals and kept them in jail.
Cooper then says as governor he signed tougher laws for violent criminals and tougher bail laws, without evidence. Among the measures Cooper vetoed in eight years as governor were bills to increase penalties for rioting and requiring cooperation with ICE. He also signed the executive order that created his soft-on-crime manifesto in 2020 with recommendations to reimagine public safety and weaken bail laws in the state.
Cooper becomes flustered at this point in the video, shouting that “this whole campaign’s been based on lies, okay?”
It is at this point he motions for a staffer to move the unnamed person away from him and the video ends.
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