Central Park Five members file defamation lawsuit against Trump over debate comments

Washington — The members of the so-called Central Park Five filed a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump on Monday, alleging he made defamatory statements about them during the presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Filed in federal district court in Pennsylvania, the suit claims that Trump falsely said during the debate last month that the five Black and Latino men who wrongly convicted for the rape of a White female jogger when they were teens in 1989 pleaded guilty to the crime and killed a person during a series of assaults that occurred in Central Park.

During the debate, Harris criticized the Republican presidential nominee for taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times soon after the attacks that called on New York to “send a message loud and clear to those who would murder our citizens and terrorize New York” by bringing back the death penalty.

The lawsuit argues that Trump’s statements in response to Harris are “demonstrably false,” as the Central Park Five — all of whom are plaintiffs in the case — never pleaded guilty, and the victims of the assaults weren’t killed.

The Central Park Five were teenagers at the time of the assaults against Trisha Meili, the White female jogger, and two men, all of whom were attacked on the same night while jogging in Central Park. They were arrested and charged for the rape and assault of Meili and other crimes. The five pleaded not guilty and maintained their innocence throughout the trial, but were convicted in 1990.

But the five were exonerated and their convictions tossed out in 2002, when DNA evidence was matched to a different man who confessed to the assaults. They’re now known as the “Exonerated Five.”

Their lawsuit alleges that Trump’s statements during the debate were “false and insulting,” and ascribe to them the “commission of criminal offenses, including offenses for which plaintiffs have never been charged or accused, offenses for which they were acquitted at trial and offenses for which they were conclusively exonerated and their convictions vacated.”

It also details a brief exchange one of the men, Yusef Salaam, had with Trump in the “spin room” after the debate, during which Salaam introduced himself as one of the “Exonerated Five.” The suit states that Salaam was “attempting to politely dialogue” with Trump about his statements and accuses the former president of refusing to engage with him.

Salaam and three members of the exonerated group of men appeared at the Democratic National Convention in August and lambasted Trump. Salaam, now a New York City councilmember, and Korey Wise, one of the exonerated five, have also appeared on the campaign trail as part of a get-out-the-vote bus tour with civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton.