The Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted of a New York City assault and rape in 1989, sued former president Donald Trump for defamation after the GOP nominee claimed during last month’s presidential debate that they pleaded guilty to the murder charges before changing their plea to not guilty.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia on Monday, alleges Trump made “false and defamatory statements negligently” and acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth when he also claimed they committed murder while debating Vice President Kamala Harris on September 10. The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued the Central Park Five “never pled guilty,” nor did they kill any of the victims in the attack.
In April 1989, a group of at least 20 or 30 teenagers were harassing people in Central Park when Trisha Meili, 28 years old at the time, was assaulted and raped while jogging. Five teens were then accused of the crime and eventually exonerated in 2002 after a serial rapist confessed to attacking Meili, who is still alive. Police also performed a DNA test to confirm the rapist was behind Meili’s assault.
The names of the five black and Latino men, now all in their 50s, are Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise.
The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages for Trump’s comments. In addition to defamation, they claim Trump painted them in a false light and intentionally inflicted emotional distress following the debate.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the lawsuit was “just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit” that was brought to “distract the American people from Kamala Harris’s dangerously liberal agenda and failing campaign,” according to CNN.
Trump has a long history with the Central Park Five, dating back to the beginning of the 1989 case. A real estate mogul and celebrity icon, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads calling for “criminals of every age” to be punished: “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The ad did not identify the suspects, but it alluded to the Central Park jogger case.
Harris brought up the ad during her debate with Trump. “Let’s remember, this is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent, the Central Park Five,” Harris said. “Took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.”
Trump responded as follows: “They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.” He noted they ended up pleading not guilty.
The former president has repeatedly stood by his comments over the years, refusing to apologize for the ad. During his first presidential campaign in 2016 and again in 2019, Trump said the Central Park Five admitted their guilt. He also wrote an op-ed for the New York Daily News in 2014, calling their $40 million civil-rights settlement with New York City a “disgrace.”