Members of the infamous “Central Park 5” on Monday filed a federal defamation lawsuit against convicted felon former President Trump for falsely stating they had pleaded guilty to a crime during the September 10th debate on ABC News that he humiliatingly lost to Vice President Kamala Harris.
From the relevant portion of the complaint:
During the segment of the debate dedicated to “race and politics in this country,” Defendant Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, made the following statement: “Let’s remember, this is the same 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. Took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.” Vice President Harris’s comment came as part of a longer answer relating to “race and politics.”
Defendant Trump responded: “[T]hey come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor Bloomberg agreed with me on the Central Park Five. 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 if they pled guilty – then they pled we’re not guilty.”
The five had never pleaded guilty. They were brought to trial, convicted, imprisoned, and released after a serial rapist confessed to the April 1989 attack on jogger Trisha Meili in 2002, his confession corroborated by DNA evidence. The city of New York paid them a $41 million settlement for the wrongful conviction. We’ll see how much coverage and defense from Trump and his minions this generates, but it’d a pretty solid hit if it does make for a news cycle, especially if they’re stuck trying to parse out his demented rambling from a debate he lost badly, seizing on “And if they pled guilty – then they pled we’re not guilty” to claim he wasn’t deliberately lying about the men.