Central Park Five sue Trump charging false and defamatory statements during debate

The so-called “Central Park Five” sued former President Donald Trump Monday, saying he made “false and defamatory” statements about them during last month’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise filed the civil complaint in US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging Trump, 78, “falsely stated” that they had “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,” lawyers for the quintet wrote in the 18-page filing.

“Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed.”The plaintiffs have demanded $225,000 in damages for defamation, false light and intentional inflection of emotional distress.Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung fired back that the lawsuit was “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.”“The frantic lawfare efforts by Lyin’ Kamala’s allies to interfere in the election are going nowhere and President Trump is dominating as he marches to a historic win for the American people on November 5th,” Cheung added.In 1990, a Manhattan jury convicted Salaam, Santana, Brown, Richardson and Wise, who are black and Hispanic, of assaulting and raping Patricia Meili, a white woman who was jogging in Central Park on the night of April 19, 1989.Salaam, Santana, Brown and Richardson were also convicted of assaults and a robbery of two other joggers in the park the same night.All were forced into providing confessions without an attorney present before trial.

Then a prominent real estate mogul, Trump took out full-page ads in New York dailies on May 1, 1989, that declared in their headlines: “Bring Back Th...