Source: Kevin Winter / Getty
The Exonerated Five have filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump for defamation related to his comments about them during the September presidential debate.
The Exonerated Five, formerly known as the Central Park Five, have filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump for defamation of character. The filing, made by Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise, points to his remarks made about them and their case in the Sept. 10 presidential debate against Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Specifically, the filing addresses Trump’s false claim that the men “killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false. “Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed.” The 1989 case began when all five, who were teenagers at the time, were arrested and convicted of the rape of a woman jogger in Central Park. Trump took out a full-page ad in May of that year demanding the city send a message and “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The five would have their convictions vacated in 2002 after police DNA testing found another prisoner had committed the rape, with New York City paying them $41 million in damages.
The lawsuit also includes other statements Trump has made about the case, including a 2013 tweet blasting the Ken Burns documentary on the case as a “one-sided piece of garbage that didn’t explain the horrific [sic] crimes of these young men while in park [sic].” It also details an interaction between Yusuf Salaam, now a New York City Councilman, and Trump after the debate in the spin room, where Trump rebuffed an attempt to dialogue about his remarks. Salaam and other members of the Exonerated Five have been campaigning for Vice President Harris and were onstage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with Reverend Al Sharpton in August.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung blasted the lawsuit in a statement, writing: “This is just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists, in an attempt to distract the American people from Kamala Harris’ dangerously liberal agenda and failing campaign.” Defamation lawsuits have been a thorn in Trump’s side – in January, a jury awarded columnist E. Jean Carroll $88.3 million for social media attacks against her, followed by a $5 million judgment in May after he was found liable for sexual abuse.
