The ex-president continued to lie about Central Park Five in spite of their exoneration and release.

Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise have sued the former U.S. president and currently Republican candidate to the White House over “false and defamatory” statements Donald Trump made about their case during the September presidential debate with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a federal lawsuit submitted in Philadelphia, the five men assert that Trump acted with “reckless disregard” for the truth when he stated during the September debate with Kamala Harris that they had confessed to crimes related to a 1989 assault and rape of a woman in New York City, suggesting they “badly hurt a person, killed a person.”

More to read:
Trump’s hypocrisy: Attacking Beijing’s trade practices, printing “God Bless the USA” Bible in China

The lawsuit emphasizes that the plaintiffs - now in their 50s - never pled guilty to the charges as Trump claimed.

Instead, they maintained their innocence throughout their trial and incarceration. The attorneys further note, “None of the victims of the Central Park assaults were killed.”

Trump has long been vocal about the case, having previously taken out full-page ads in New York newspapers in the late 1980s calling for the death penalty for the two Blacks and three Latinos. His remarks in the recent debate were made in response to Harris referencing those ads, highlighting the racial implications of the case.

The plaintiffs are seeking both compensatory and punitive damages, claiming Trump’s comments have caused them severe emotional distress and placed them in a false light for an audience of more than 60 million American viewers who watched the debate.

More to read:
MAGA supporters release AI-generated fakes of Trump with black voters

They were coerced into giving false confessions, and were exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence identified another perpetrator, who confessed to the crime after all. Their lawsuit against the city was settled in 2014 for $41 million.

Despite the exoneration, Trump has repeatedly maintained that the individuals were guilty, criticizing the city’s settlement with the five men as “a disgrace.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung dismissed the lawsuit as a “frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit” aimed at distracting voters from Harris’s “dangerously liberal agenda.” The grammar and style of this message suggests that Trump himself wrote the response for the media.

***
NewsCafe is an independent outlet that cares about big issues.Our sources of income amount to ads and donations from readers.You can support us via PayPal: office[at]rudeana.com or paypal.me/newscafeeu.We promise to reward this gesture with more captivating and important topics.