Donald Trump’s lawyer called the lawsuit “baseless” and “yet another unfounded and meritless attack” against the 47th president of the United States by the now Exonerated Five.
A federal judge declined to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by the Central Park Five against Donald Trump, handing a legal setback to the sitting U.S. president who tried to end the case.
U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone in Philadelphia ruled that Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise, now known as the Exonerated Five, presented enough evidence in the case to proceed, reports Reuters. The five Black and brown men, who were convicted as minors and later exonerated in 2002 for a 1989 rape and assault of a New York City jogger, sued Trump in October 2024 for unspecified monetary damages for reputational and emotional harms as well as punitive damages.
The men formerly known as the Central Park Five accused the then-presidential candidate of defaming them during a Sept. 10, 2024, presidential debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris when he falsely claimed they murdered someone and had pled guilty. Trump’s remarks came after Harris accused him of having a years-long history of using race to divide and harm people, including taking out a full-page ad calling for the Central Park Five’s executions.
“They pled guilty…they killed a person ultimately,” Trump said on the debate stage. However, the five young boys were actually coerced into false confessions. They later recanted and pled not guilty.
Despite allowing the defamation case to proceed, Judge Beetlestone narrowed the case by dismissing the plaintiffs’ claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Nonetheless, the attorney for Salaam, Santana, Richardson, Brown, and Wise welcomed the ruling and said in a statement that they “look forward to discovery, trial, and the ultimate vindication of these five fine men.”
Trump’s lawyer called the lawsuit “baseless” and “yet another unfounded and meritless attack” against the 47th president of the United States.
Unlike Trump’s criminal cases, which he has evaded because sitting presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution, the Exonerated Five’s defamation lawsuit is one of few legal pathways for holding him accountable. Trump lost another high-profile defamation lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued him related to a civil case in which he was found liable for sexually abusing her.
Attorneys for Trump argued that his false remarks about the Central Park Five were legally protected as opinion under the First Amendment’s free speech clause. However, Judge Beetlestone said Trump’s statements “must be construed as one of fact, not opinion,” because it can “objectively determined” to be false that the five men pleaded guilty or killed someone.
“When we look over the course of Donald Trump’s life and Donald Trump’s career, he’s been proven to be a liar, and he’s been proven to be a liar in terms of targeting women and people of color,” Jamarr Brown, executive director of Color of Change PAC, previously told theGrio when discussing the defamation lawsuit. “At the end of the day, that’s what his career has been. And what defamation lawsuits do is say you’re not going to lie on me. You’re not going to demean me and my character.”
He added, “He should be held accountable in every turn because he has operated really unruly and unhinged without a lot of accountability.”
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