ps88 Central Park 5 Sue Trump for Defamation Over Debate Comments
Five Black and Latino men who were wrongly convicted as teenagers and later exonerated in the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park sued former President Donald J. Trump in federal court on Monday, saying he defamed them during a nationally televised debate.
The men, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Antron McCray, became known as the Central Park Five after the 1989 attack, in a case that drew international attention and inflamed racial tensions in New York City. Collectively, they spent decades in prison before being cleared by DNA evidence and another man’s confession.
During the presidential debate in September between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Ms. Harris noted that Mr. Trump, who was then a prominent real estate developer, took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times calling for the death penalty in the case.
She said it demonstrated the way that Mr. Trump had long “attempted to use race to divide the American people.”
In response, Mr. Trump falsely said that the men had pleaded guilty to the crime and that someone had been killed during the attack.
“They admitted — they said, they pled guilty,” Mr. Trump said. “And I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person, ultimately.”
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