On Monday, the five Black and Hispanic men wrongfully convicted for the 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. The lawsuit comes as a response to false claims made by Trump during the U.S. presidential debate last September. Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise were in jail for five to 13 years before their release in 2002 after new DNA evidence and a confession by the real criminal.

In the Sept. 10 debate, the Republican presidential candidate Trump falsely told the world that the Central Park Five “killed a person and pleaded guilty.” Trump’s claim was thoroughly disproven. The group filed its lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia on charges that Trump defamed them by lies. A lawyer for the men, Shanin Specter, said that the lawsuit seeks correction of the false statements and retribution for the emotional distress inflicted by Trump’s comments.

Trump’s campaign attempted to frame the lawsuit as ‘frivolous’ and politically motivated, but Specter denied political intent behind the legal action, saying, ‘We are seeking redress in a court of law, not making a political statement.'” The plaintiffs seek monetary damages for loss of reputation and emotional distress and punitive damages against Trump for his false statements.

It is not the first time that criticism fell on Trump’s account of what he said concerning the Central Park Five. Following the 1989 crime, Trump had taken full-page ads in several New York newspapers advocating for the reinstatement of the death penalty. Even after these young men were exonerated, Trump has refused to retract his previous statements by not apologizing for how he contributed to public hysteria against the five young men. He further solidified his stance in 2019, intensifying the criticism against him for his role in the case.

This is one of the many legal challenges Trump has faced recently. This month, he moved for the dismissal of a $5 million jury verdict against him by a federal court that awarded damages in a suit for sexual assault and defamation filed by writing author E. Jean Carroll. In March, a different jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in damages for defamation,  stated that Trump’s public comments damaged her reputation in the wake of her rape allegations against him.

The Central Park Five’s defamation action against Trump does not seek to restore their reputations but to punish Trump for the now-repeated emotional and reputational toll his falsehoods have exacted.

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