'Central Park 5' sue Trump for defamation

Exonerated "Central Park Five" pose in promotional shot

Members of the exonerated 'Central Park Five' pose in a promotional shot

(Image credit: Presley Ann / Getty Images)

What happened

Members of the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Hispanic men wrongfully convicted as teenagers of the 1989 rape of a jogger in Manhattan, sued Donald Trump Monday for spreading "false, misleading and defamatory" claims about their case last month during his presidential debate with Kamala Harris.

Who said what

Harris noted in the debate that Trump in 1989 "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." Trump said in reply that "they admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately."

The jogger did not die in the attack. And the five men "never pled guilty to the Central Park assaults," lawyers for the group said in a filing in federal court in Philadelphia, where the debate took place. They "maintained their innocence throughout their trial and incarceration." DNA evidence exonerated all five in 2002, and they reached a $41 million settlement with New York City in 2014.

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Trump falsely "made it appear that they were guilty," and "it is devastating to be accused of these things all over again on national television to an audience of 67 million people," lawyer Shanin Specter told The New York Times. A Trump campaign spokesperson called the defamation claim "just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit."

What next?

The group, now calling themselves the "Exonerated Five," are "seeking unspecified monetary damages for reputational and emotional harms as well as punitive damages," Reuters said.

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.