The five Black and Latino men formerly known as the “Central Park Five” who were wrongly accused and convicted as teens of brutal assaults and rape in New York City in 1989 filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump on Monday over statements he made during the presidential debate last month, when the former president said the men had “pled guilty” to violent crimes, including killing a person. During the live televised debate in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, which had turned to “race and politics,” Kamala Harris said Trump “is the 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 … calling for their execution.” President Donald Trump has refused to issue an apology to the Central Park Five, saying he still believes they’re guilty. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Harris said the ad showed how Trump had “attempted to use race to divide the American people.” Trump responded that the Central Park Five “admitted — they said they pled guilty. And I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.’” The lawsuit calls those remarks the latest in a “continuing pattern” of false, misleading and defamatory statements that Trump has made about the men over the past decade or so, despite knowing that they never pleaded guilty, that their convictions were later overturned, and that none of the victims of the Central Park assaults were killed. The plaintiffs, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise, were between 14 and 16 years old when they were wrongfully convicted of a series of assaults that occurred in Central Park on April 19, 1989, including the beating and rape of Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white woman who was jogging in the park. Their convictions relied almost entirely on false confessions the teens made after hours of coercive interrogation, confessions they soon recanted, the lawsuit says. They all pled not guilty to charges of attempted murder, rape, sodomy, assault, sexual abuse and riot. They were variously convicted in 1990 of some of the charges and served several years in prison “during their formative years,” the complaint says. All five men’s convictions were vacated in 2002 after Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer, confessed to the sexual assault of Meili, which was further corroborated by DNA evidence. The men later sued the city of New York for false arrest, malicious prosecution and racially motivated conspiracy; the city settled with the plaintiffs in 2014 for $41 million, according to the lawsuit, which noted that then-Mayor Bill De Blasio said of the settlement, “We have a moral obligation to respond to this injustice.” Trump has never backed down from his assertions that the five young men were guilty of violence, which began with full-page ads in four New York City newspapers that ran in May of 1989, and which, the complaint says, “alluded to the assaults in Central Park without specifically identifying the suspects and called for the City of New York 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 Central Park 5, wrongfully convicted in a 1989 NYC assault and later exonerated in 2002, sued former President Donald Trump for defamation after he claimed they were responsible for the crime and falsely stated a victim had died during a recent debate. pic.twitter.com/UelKU9Foc7— No Jumper (@nojumper) October 22, 2024 Trump’s 1989 ad also said, “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer. … I want to hate these murderers, and I always will. … I am looking to punish them.  … I want them to understand our anger. I want them to be afraid.” Trump has subsequently made numerous public statements “demonstrating that he is familiar with the Central Park assaults, the criminal case, the trials, the exoneration of the men and their settlement with the city, and that he, therefore, knew the statements he made on September 10, 2024, were false and misleading,” the complaint says. It notes that in 2013, Trump tweeted his impressions of “The Central Park Five,” a 2012 documentary by Ken Burns which covers “the true circumstances of the Central Park assaults” and the men’s legal trials and ultimate exoneration, including the fact that the accused teens “never pled guilty and that the victims did not die. “ Meili, who fell into a coma for almost two weeks after she was beaten and raped and remembered nothing of the assault, is still alive but deals with the lingering effects of her attack, reported NPR News. Trump’s Twitter post said the film was a “one-sided piece of garbage that didn’t explain the. horrific  [sic] crimes of these young men while in park [sic],” the lawsuit said. The Central Park Five documentary was a one sided piece of garbage that didn't explain the.horrific crimes of these young men while in park— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2013 Later in 2013, Trump tweeted that the plaintiffs were guilty of “mugging” and wrote an editorial in the New York Daily News calling the civil settlement with New York City a “disgrace,” and said, “[t]hese young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels,” and asked, “What about the other people who were brutalized that night, in addition to the jogger?” When a reporter asked Trump in 2019 why he would not apologize to the men, given their exonerations, he said, “It’s an interesting time to bring that up. You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt . . . some of the prosecutors think the city should never have settled that case, and we’ll leave it at that.” The complaint notes that after the case was re-investigated in 2002, Nancy Ryan, the head of the trial division in the New York district attorney’s office, had recommended that the convictions related to assaults on two men in the park be vacated because the trial evidence, “like the evidence as to the attack on the female jogger, consisted almost entirely of the defendants’ statements,” was not based on other forensic evidence, and was “substantially and fatally weakened by the newly discovered evidence in this matter.” On Dec. 19, 2002, all of the plaintiffs’ convictions were vacated and indictments dismissed by a New York Supreme Court judge. The lawsuit says Trump’s false and defamatory public statements made since then and on Sept. 10 during the debate “were made negligently, with knowledge of their falsity and/or with reckless disregard for 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 complaint states.  Many across the web felt the move was in the making for some time. “Long overdue!” exclaimed one user responding to the post of the news on Instagram. “Finally, sue the hell out of him… when he won’t even apologize for being wrong,” wrote another. One commenter was perplexed by Trump’s signature incoherent speech. “What the hell language does this dude speak? Just a bunch of incomplete sentences smashed together.” The plaintiffs seek unspecified damages to compensate for their reputational damage, emotional pain and suffering, out-of-pocket costs, and punitive damages.   Salaam is now 50 years old and a New York City Council member. Santana, 50, is an author, fashion designer and civil rights advocate who lives in Georgia, as does Brown, who is retired, according to the lawsuit. Richardson, 50, is a motivational speaker and philanthropist living in New Jersey, and Wise, 52, is a civil rights advocate who lives in New York. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the lawsuit was aimed at altering the presidential election outcome. “This 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,” Cheung said in a statement. ‘What the Hell’: Donald Trump Hit with ‘Long Overdue’ Defamation Lawsuit from Exonerated Central Park Five As He Refuses to Apologize and Continues to Spread ‘Outrageous’ Lies