With Election Day two weeks away, the men formerly known as the Central Park Five filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday, October 21, against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. They accused him of making "false and defamatory statements" about them during the presidential debate, on September 10, 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.
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."
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 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. In the 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.
Kamala Harris teamed up with Liz Cheney on Monday to make a bipartisan appeal to Republican voters uneasy about Donald Trump, describing the former president as a malignant force that needs to be excised from American politics.
The Democratic vice president said at an event in the Philadelphia suburbs that Trump "has been using the power of the presidency to demean and to divide us" and "people are exhausted with that."
Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, said her background as a conservative means she prioritizes the Constitution over her political party, and she was concerned about allowing a "totally erratic, completely unstable" Trump to run foreign policy. "Our adversaries know that they can play Donald Trump," she said. "And we cannot afford to take that risk."
Harris promised to "invite good ideas from wherever they come" and "cut red tape," and she said "there should be a healthy two party system" in the country.
Although Cheney has long described herself as pro-life, she suggested that Republican women should vote for Harris on the issue of reproductive health because restrictions on abortion have gone too far since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. "The American people vote for freedom, regardless of the party with which they're registered to vote," said Harris, who also warned that "our daughters are going to have fewer rights than their grandmothers."
Cheney says she endorsed Harris because of her concerns about Trump. She lost her House seat after she co-chaired a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. That's when a violent mob of Trump supporters broke into the building and bloodied law enforcement in a failed effort to stop the certification of Biden's 2020 presidential win.
Trump lashed out at Cheney on social media on Monday, calling her "dumb as a rock" and accusing her of being a "war hawk." Cheney is not the only member of her party to back Harris. More than 100 former Republican officeholders and officials joined Harris last week in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, not far from where Gen. George Washington led hundreds of troops across the Delaware River to a major victory in the Revolutionary War.
As the election draws near, the vice president has increasingly focused on Trump's lies around the 2020 election and his role in the violent mob's failed efforts. She says Trump is "unstable" and "unhinged" and would eviscerate democratic norms if given a second White House term. Trump has been trying to minimize the violent Jan. 6 confrontation as he campaigns, claiming it was "a day of love from the standpoint of the millions."