Five men cleared of rape charges sued former President Donald Trump on Oct. 21, arguing he defamed them with comments he made at a recent presidential debate.
Trump said during the September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that the so-called Central Park Five “pled guilty” and that they “badly hurt a person” and “killed a person, ultimately.”
The plaintiffs say Trump made the comments negligently, either with the knowledge that they were false or with reckless disregard as to their falsity.
“Defendant Trump’s conduct at the September 10 debate was extreme and outrageous, and it was intended to cause severe emotional distress to Plaintiffs,” the suit states.
Juries in 1990 convicted Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise of rape and other charges. They had pleaded not guilty, after they admitted to participating in a night of criminal activity, including assault and robbery, in Central Park on April 19, 1989.
Some of the then-teenagers said they had assaulted or sexually touched a jogger Trisha Meili and implicated others in raping her.
The five, two weeks after their confessions, had recanted their statements, saying that they were allegedly coerced by police into giving false confessions in the case.
Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist, a decade later confessed to raping Meili on the evening of April 19. Investigators confirmed the details offered by Reyes. Prosecutors told a state court the convictions against the five males should be vacated, because their confessions linking the five to related crimes were obtained under duress after hours of questioning and without the presence of their guardians or legal counsel.
“The new DNA evidence ... does not assist in determining whether the defendants were present during the attack on the jogger,” it said.
Trump, who paid for an advertisement in 1989 calling for the five to be put to death, was responding during the debate after Harris highlighted his involvement with the case.
“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,” she said.
Trump then offered his response and said that Harris “has to stretch back years, 40, 50 years ago because there’s nothing now.”
In 2019, when asked if he would apologize to the five men, Trump told reporters that “They admitted their guilt.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, told news outlets that the filing “is just another frivolous election interference lawsuit filed by desperate left-wing activists in an attempt to distract the American people from Kamala Harris’s dangerously liberal agenda and failing campaign.”
