Trump sued by Central Park Five for defamation over Harris debate claims

Five men who were wrongfully convicted as teenagers in the so-called Central Park Five jogger rape case sued Donald Trump on Monday, saying the Republican presidential nominee defamed them by falsely claiming they killed someone and pleaded guilty.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, cites several statements Trump made about the men during his Sept. 10 debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, after she blasted Trump for taking out an ad in 1989 calling for the then-teen defendants to be executed.

“Defendant Trump falsely stated [at the debate] that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,” the civil suit said.

“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 complaint said.

The suit alleges that Trump’s conduct toward the men at the debate “was part of a continuing pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct dating back several years, thus constituting a continuing tort.”

The plaintiffs in the case, who now refer to themselves as the Exonerate Five, are Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise. Salaam is a member of the New York City Council.

Their suit, which alleges claims of defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress, requests damages of more than $75,000, with total compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial.

CNBC has requested comment from a spokesman for Trump’s campaign.

The lawsuit notes that the men, while teenagers, were convicted at trials of a series of assaults that occurred in New York City’s Central Park in April 1989. The men were between 14 years old and 16 years old at the time, and spent years in prison after their convictions.

Less than two weeks after a sexual assault on a jogger in the park for which the teens were charged, Trump paid for a full-page ad in New York newspapers that “alluded to the assaults in Central Park without specifically identifying the suspects and called for the City of New York to “[s]end a message loud and clear to those who would murder our citizens and terrorize New York—BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE,” the suit noted.

All five men were exonerated in 2002 of the claim they raped the jogger based on newly discovered DNA evidence.

The men a year later sued New York City for false arrest, malicious prosecution and racially motivated conspiracy. The city settled the suit more than a decade later by agreeing to pay the men $41 million, a deal that Trump called a “disgrace” in a newspaper op-ed that year.

At the presidential debate in September, Harris said, “Let’s remember, this is the same individual [Trump] 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,” Harris added, the suit noted.

Trump responded to Harris by saying, “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,” Trump said.

Trump previously was held liable in two separate lawsuits for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll after she publicly alleged he had raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Juries after trials in those cases awarded Carroll a total $88.3 million in damages, which included damages after finding he had sexually abused the write.

Trump is appealing the verdicts in those cases, which were filed in federal court in Manhattan.