Central Park Five sue Donald Trump for jogger case remarks made at presidential debate

The men formerly known as the Central Park Five before they were exonerated filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

With Election Day two weeks away, the group accused the former president of making “false and defamatory statements” about them during last month's presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. The group is asking for a jury trial to determine compensatory and punitive damages.

“Defendant Trump falsely stated that plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,” the group wrote in the federal complaint.

The men are upset because Trump essentially “defamed them in front of 67 million people, which has caused them to seek to clear their names all over again,” co-lead counsel Shanin Specter told The Associated Press in an email.

Specter had no comment when asked if there were concerns some see the lawsuit as purely political because of the group's support for Harris. “We are seeking redress in the courts,” Specter said.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung decried the suit as “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.”

Trump campaign officials did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise were teenagers when they were accused of the 1989 rape and beating of a white woman jogger in New York City's Central Park. The five, who are Black and Latino, said they confessed to the crimes under duress. They later recanted, pleading not guilty in court, and were later convicted after jury trials. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime.

After the crime, Trump purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. At the time, many in New York believed Trump’s ad was akin to calling for the teens to be executed. The jogger case was Trump’s first foray into tough-on-crime politics that preluded his full-throated populist political persona. Since then, dog whistles and overtly racist rhetoric have been fixtures of Trump’s public life.

In the Sept. 10 debate, Trump misstated key facts of the case when Harris brought up the matter.

“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 they pled guilty, then they pled not guilty,” Trump said.

He appeared to be confusing guilty pleas with confessions. Also, no victim died.

The now Exonerated Five, including Salaam, who is now a New York City councilman, have been campaigning for Harris. Some of them spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, calling out Trump for never apologizing for the newspaper ad.

They have also joined civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton for a get-out-the-vote bus tour.

Prior defamation suits involving Trump have led to sizable amounts awarded to the plaintiffs. In January, a jury awarded $83.3 million to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll over Trump's continued social media attacks against her claims he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996. In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing her and issued a $5 million judgement.