Another defamation lawsuit against the President is moving forward after a federal judge just denied Trump’s attempt to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by members of the Exonerated Five, the men wrongfully convicted as teenagers in the infamous 1989 Central Park jogger case.
Full stop. We do not condone falsely accusing anyone of heinous acts; this situation is no different. However, the POTUS is allowed and afforded due process, which is more than many people see today at this very moment in other legal arenas.
Get this: U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled that the plaintiffs—Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise—presented a plausible case that Trump knowingly spread false claims about their exoneration. The lawsuit stems from comments Trump made during a September 2024 presidential debate, during which he repeated inaccurate statements about the case.
But wait, during the debate, Trump referenced his controversial 1989 newspaper ad advocating harsh punishment for the accused teens. “[T]hey come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg agreed with me on the ‘Central Park 5,'” he stated. “They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.’ Then they pled ‘we’re not guilty.'”
Judge Beetlestone noted that Trump’s remarks could reasonably be interpreted as defamatory, given the widely known facts of the case. The men were exonerated in 2002 after DNA evidence and a confession from the actual attacker, a rapist, proved their innocence. They had never pleaded guilty, contrary to Trump’s claims.
Check this out: The judge also clarified that the plaintiffs have not yet fully met the legal requirements for one of their defamation arguments or their claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The case will move forward as the court evaluates these claims.
When it comes to the Exonerated Five’s lawsuit, it seeks accountability for what they describe as Trump’s continued dissemination of false information about their ordeal, which has caused them lasting harm.
That part.