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The five men wrongfully convicted of the assault and rape of a woman in Central Park in 1989 have filed a defamation lawsuit over comments that Donald Trump made about them at September’s presidential debate.
Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise claim in their lawsuit that during the debate, Trump falsely stated that they “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.”
Their lawsuit, filed in federal court in Pennsylvania, also cited other statements that Trump has made about their case.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately return a request for comment.
The five men were all teenagers when they were arrested and later convicted of the rape. The lawsuit noted that, after their arrest, they spent hours of interrogation, and four of them “admitted to having been present during the assaults.” They recanted those statements shortly after the interrogations.
In May of 1989, Trump published a full-page ad in four New York newspapers, calling for the city to send “a message loud and clear to those who would murder our citizens and terrorize New York—BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”
The five teenagers were charged with attempted murder, rape, sodomy, assault, robbery, sexual abuse and riot. They each plead not guilty, but were convicted on some of the charges at trial.
In prison, the lawsuit noted, Wise met a fellow prisoner, Matias Reyes, who confessed that he was the true perpetrator. That was confirmed by a police DNA test. The Central Park Five convictions were vacated in 2002, and the city of New York paid them $41 million in 2014 in a settlement of a civil suit.
Their case came up during the presidential debate when Kamala Harris noted that Trump “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.”
Trump responded that Harris and other opponents “come up with things like what she just said
going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor Bloomberg agreed with me
on the Central Park Five. They admitted – they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled
guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty – then they pled
we’re not guilty.”
According to the lawsuit, Salaam, now a member of the New York City Council, encountered Trump in the spin room after the debate. According to the suit, Salaam told him, “President Trump, I’m Yusef Salaam, one of the Exonerated Five. How are you doing?”
Trump responded, “Ah, you’re on my side then.” Salaam said, “No, no, no, I’m not on your side.”
According to the lawsuit, “Defendant Trump proceeded to wave his hand at Plaintiff Salaam, smile and walk away. Plaintiff Salaam was attempting to politely dialogue with Defendant Trump about
the false and defamatory statements that Defendant Trump had made about Plaintiffs less than an
hour earlier, but Defendant Trump refused to engage with him in dialogue.”
The lawsuit also cited other statements that Trump has made about the case, years after their convictions were vacated. That included a tweet from 2013 in which Trump made a comment about Ken Burns’ documentary about the case. He described 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].”
The lawsuit stated, “Given that Defendant Trump has seen the film, he knew that his statements at the
September 10 debate were false, misleading and defamatory.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
