We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

Lawfare against Donald Trump is all the rage these days and the latest salvo fired in this dirty little war came from a group known as the “Central Park Five,” a group of five black and Hispanic teens who were convicted of the brutal rape of a jogger in New York City.

Attorneys representing the five men filed a civil defamation suit against Trump in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking monetary damages over statements Trump made during the Sept. 10 ABC News presidential debate, claiming he caused them “severe emotional distress and reputational damage,” ABC News reported.

Trump ran a full-page ad in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the state to adopt the death penalty after the attack and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris mentioned it during their debate.

“They 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 Five,” Trump replied. “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.”

The men served years in prison, but were exonerated a decade after the attack when a different man confessed to the crime, which was confirmed through DNA analysis, according to ABC News. New York City paid $41 million in 2014 to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by the five.

“The lawsuit points out that Trump’s statements were false in multiple respects — noting none of the members of the Central Park Five ever entered guilty pleas in the case, none of the victims of the Central Park assaults were killed, and the mayor at the time of the assaults was Ed Koch — who did not agree with Trump’s position in the full-page ad,” the network reported.

The Trump campaign dismissed the civil action as another act of desperation designed to impact the 2024 presidential election.

“This is just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists,” the campaign said in a statement.

Funding lawsuits targeting Donald Trump has been a popular tactic from moneyed interests on the left determined to thwart his political aspirations.

Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story, as seen on the social media platform X:

Tom Tillison
Latest posts by Tom Tillison (see all)

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.