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Central Park Five defendants sue Trump over remarks on their guilt

Activist Korey Wise, center, speaks onstage Aug. 22 as representatives from “the Central Park Five,” activist Kevin Richardson, New York City Council member Yusef Salaam and Activist Raymond Santana, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, look on during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago.  (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
By Shayna Jacobs Washington Post

A group of men who were exonerated for the rape and assault of a woman in Central Park in 1989 have sued Donald Trump for continuing to suggest that they are guilty, including at the presidential debate in Philadelphia last month.

The Central Park Five alleged in a federal court lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania that Trump falsely claimed at the debate that they pleaded guilty after being charged in the case as teenagers, and that they had killed someone. The defendants in fact were cleared of wrongdoing. And the victim of the infamous attack sustained life-threatening injuries but survived.

At the time of the crime, Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for a return of the death penalty in New York, a move widely seen as a reaction to the attack on the jogger, directed at those who had committed the assault.

After a re-investigation of the case and after another suspect’s DNA confirmed his involvement, the defendants, who were Black and Latino, were cleared of wrongdoing. By then, they had served years in prison.

As he seeks a second term in the White House, Trump has continued to make public statements implying guilt on the part of the Central Park Five, suggesting that they were responsible for some crimes that occurred in the park - including another brutal assault.

Trump’s comments at the debate reached an enormous television audience and were further amplified in widespread news coverage.

The wrongly accused men “suffered harm, including severe emotional distress and reputational damage, as a direct result of Defendant Trump’s false and defamatory statements at the [debate], as well as his continuing pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct,” their lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

Trump lost two defamation lawsuits over the past two years that were brought against him by author E. Jean Carroll, who also successfully sued him for a long-ago sexual assault.

Carroll, who won verdicts totaling about $90 million, said Trump sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s. He adamantly denied it and repeatedly called her a liar and insulted her after her claim was made public.