The exonerated Central Park 5 have mounted a forceful challenge to Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss their defamation lawsuit, arguing his past presidential debate statements were demonstrably false and defamatory.
In their November 22 response to Trump’s motion, the men’s attorneys systematically dismantled Trump’s defense of his September 10 ABC News presidential debate remarks, declaring his claim that they “killed a person” was “fabricated from whole cloth.”
The filing in Pennsylvania federal court specifically challenges Trump on three points: his false assertion that they pled guilty to the 1989 Central Park assault, his inaccurate claim that someone was killed during the incident, and his omission of their complete exoneration more than twenty years ago.
The controversy dates back to 1989 when Trump purchased a full-page New York Times advertisement calling for the death penalty’s return to punish the then-accused group of teenagers. The men were later exonerated in 2002 after new DNA evidence emerged and another person confessed to the crime. New York City settled with them in 2014 worth approximately $40 million.
Their attorneys emphasized that the men—who were between 14 and 16 years old and unrepresented by counsel at the time—gave false confessions which they “immediately recanted upon their release from police custody.” According to the filing, citing the National Registry of Exonerations, roughly half of individuals exonerated following murder convictions involving DNA evidence since 1989 made false confessions.
Newsweek contacted the Trump transition team via email on Saturday for comment.
Trump’s attorney, Karin Sweigart, had characterized the lawsuit as “legally insufficient and meritless,” arguing his debate comments were “non-actionable opinion” and “substantially true” based on statements made during their 1989 arrests. The five men—Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—forcefully countered this interpretation.
The response, filed by attorneys Shanin Specter and Alex Van Dyke, draws a stark distinction between coerced confessions and guilty pleas. Under Pennsylvania law, they argue, statements can be distinguished from opinions by whether they can be “objectively determined.” Their filing notes Trump’s statements can be “verified as true or false—they are both false.”
The men’s lawyers also rejected Trump’s invocation of Pennsylvania’s anti-SLAPP statute, pointing out that district courts within the Third Circuit have concluded such statutes don’t apply in federal court. They further rebuked Trump’s characterization of the case as an attempt to “silence political discourse.”
The case stems from Trump’s statements during the presidential debate when he said, “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.'”
Beyond defamation, the filing includes claims for casting them in a “false light” and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The attorneys cite Trump’s alleged admission of wanting to make them “suffer… to punish them… to [make them] be afraid,” describing this as a “public vendetta against five innocent men” that is “intolerable in a civilized society.”
The filing emphasizes that “accuracy is important when accusing individuals of serious crimes.” They argue there is “a vast difference between a recanted confession and a guilty plea,” noting that guilty pleas involve procedural safeguards and counsel representation absent during police interrogations.
Judge Wendy Beetlestone, recently assigned after Trump’s attorneys sought the previous judge’s recusal over his personal relationship with Specter, will consider the arguments at a pre-Motion to Dismiss Conference scheduled for December 5, 2024.
