Donald Trump is facing a defamation lawsuit from the Central Park Five after making false statements about the wrongfully convicted group during a presidential debate. At the September 10 debate with Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump incorrectly claimed that the five Black and Hispanic men had killed someone and pleaded guilty.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in Philadelphia, comes from Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise. The five were wrongfully convicted of the 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park. They spent between five and 13 years in prison before being exonerated in 2002 when new DNA evidence and a confession by another individual cleared their names.
The Central Park Five, as they are widely known, are suing Trump for defamation over his remarks at the debate. A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not immediately comment on the lawsuit.
In the suit, the plaintiffs describe Trump’s statements as “demonstrably false.” Their lawyer, Shanin Specter, emphasized that Trump’s comments “cast them in a harmful false light and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary compensation for reputational and emotional damages, as well as punitive damages.
This is not the first time Trump has faced backlash over his comments about the Central Park Five. Following the attack on the jogger, Trump took out a full-page ad in several New York newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Trump is also involved in another legal case related to defamation. In September, he asked a U.S. appeals court to overturn a $5 million verdict holding him liable for sexually assaulting and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. A different jury previously ordered Trump to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defamation, stemming from his June 2019 remarks after she accused him of rape.
