From left to right in the image: Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, shown on CBS Sunday Morning. In the background, Donald Trump is seen speaking at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC on June 22, 2024. The photo is credited to Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP.
Donald Trump has asked a federal judge in Pennsylvania to toss out the lawsuit filed against him by members of the Central Park Five over comments the president-elect made during the presidential debate earlier this year, claiming the falsely-accused quintet are attempting to portray constitutionally protected “political rhetoric” and “substantially true” statements as defamation.
In a motion seeking to dismiss the complaint filed Wednesday, Trump argued that his statements about the men were merely an explanation of “the opinion that he had held” about them in the immediate aftermath of their 1989 arrests — namely, that they were guilty.
“Plaintiffs now attempt to recast political rhetoric and debate about criminal justice and public safety as ‘defamation,”” the motion states. “This ignores well-settled First Amendment jurisprudence that protects the President-elect’s speech about matters of public concern. Plaintiffs’ claims fail to meet the elements required for defamation because President-elect Trump’s statements, taken in context were protected opinions based on true disclosed fact, lacked any defamatory sting, and were substantially true.”
Trump also argued that additional claims of false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress should fail for similar reasons.
The lawsuit
In the filed complaint, Antron Brown, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam claim that during his lone debate with Kamala Harris, Trump “falsely stated that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime.”
“Plaintiffs allege that these statements, addressing public safety and criminal justice, constitute defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress,” defense attorney Karin Sweigart wrote in the letter to U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone. “However, these claims fail on both procedural and substantive grounds, and Plaintiffs’ attempt to use the courts to silence political discourse is barred by Pennsylvania’s robust protections for free speech.”
Trump’s comments
The exchange in question occurred when Harris said that throughout his life and career, Trump has “attempted to use race to divide the American people.” One of the examples she provided was the full-page ad he placed in The New York Times and elsewhere in 1989 “calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent — the Central Park Five.”
In response to Harris, Trump said “they 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,” he said. “And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.”
These words, the complaint said, were “demonstrably false.”
“Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed,” the lawsuit said.
The motion to dismiss
Anti-SLAPP stands for “Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” and such laws are designed to prevent people from being intimidated or silenced by the threat of expensive lawsuits.
The dismissal motion states it is “beyond dispute” that Trump’s debate comments constitute speech on “matters of public concern,” particularly crime, punishment, policing, and “face and politics in this country.”
Trump also argued that his statements do not amount to defamation, because he was merely explaining his rationale for taking out The New York Times ad, saying it was “about crime and punishment.” According to Trump, after Harris accused him of calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, Trump explained that he took out the ad because “at that time, Plaintiffs had admitted guilt to heinous crimes.”
“This is a true fact that Plaintiffs freely admit,” the motion states. “President-elect Trump framed his debate statements as his own interpretation of the evidence available to him in 1989.”
The filing also notes that Trump did not dispute Harris’ assertion that the members of the Central Park Five were ultimately proven innocent.
The president-elect further asserted that his statements could not be defamatory because they were “substantially true,” because the difference between formally pleading guilty to a crime in court and “admitting guilt” is merely a technicality.
“Plaintiffs allege that President-elect Trump defamed them by stating that they had ‘pled’ guilty to the Central Park Assaults in 1989, when in fact, Plaintiffs had ‘admitted’ guilt in connection with the assaults,” the motion states. “In other words, Plaintiffs object to the technically incorrect use of the criminal law term ‘pled.’ But an assertion that Plaintiffs initially ‘pled’ guilty instead of ‘admitting’ guilt is precisely the type of technical inaccuracy in the inherently complicated context of criminal law that ‘cannot be the basis of a defamation claim.’”
Additionally, the motion argues that when Trump said “if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately,” it is not defamation despite the fact that nobody was killed in the attack because one of the victims was described as being “virtually dead.”
The backstory of the Central Park Five
In 1989, the then-teenagers were wrongly accused of raping Trisha Meili as she jogged in Central Park. The five were also accused of attacking two men that same night.
“While in police custody, Plaintiffs were each separately subjected to hours of coercive interrogation, under duress, with no attorney present and often without a parent or guardian present,” the lawsuit recounted. “Plaintiffs all initially denied having any knowledge of the Central Park assaults. However, after hours of interrogation, four of the Plaintiffs agreed to provide written and videotaped statements in which they falsely admitted to having been present during the assaults.”
From there, the Central Park Five faced trials, maintained their innocence, were convicted by juries in 1990 and were sent to prison, only to be exonerated decades later after the real attacker, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime against Meili and DNA “conclusively” proved that Reyes was the “true perpetrator,” court documents said.
“In fact, Plaintiffs were not involved in the assaults in any way, and their statements were the product of coercion and duress,” the lawsuit said. “Plaintiffs all recanted their coerced statements shortly after their interrogations.”
The Central Park Five were ultimately exonerated, their convictions were vacated, and New York City went on to settle a lawsuit for $41 million
