Donald Trump has requested that a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismiss the Central Park Five members’ defamation lawsuit against him because of remarks the president-elect made about them during the presidential debate earlier this year, arguing that his remarks are protected by state law.
According to the petition, the lawsuit against Trump is only an effort to suppress expression that is protected by the constitution by making legally baseless and illegal assertions.
Days after his legal team successfully removed the case’s presiding judge, Trump submitted his response on Tuesday, claiming that the judge’s impartiality was called into question due to his long-standing personal friendship with the plaintiff’s primary attorney.
Antron Brown, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam allege in the complaint that Trump made false claims that Plaintiffs killed someone and pled guilty to the crime during his one debate with Kamala Harris.
In the letter to U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone, defense lawyer Karin Sweigart stated that plaintiffs claim that these remarks, which deal with criminal justice and public safety, are defamatory, false, and purposeful infliction of emotional distress. These arguments, however, are rejected on both a procedural and substantive level, and Pennsylvania’s strong free speech rights preclude the plaintiffs’ attempt to utilize the legal system to stifle political debate.
Trump’s remarks
In the disputed conversation, Harris claimed that Trump has tried to utilize race as a means of dividing the American people throughout his life and career. She cited the 1989 full-page ad in The New York Times and other publications that demanded the killing of five young, innocent Black and Latino boys known as the Central Park Five.
Trump responded to Harris by saying that ideas similar to what she just stated have been around for a long time and that many people, including Mayor Bloomberg, agreed with him on the Central Park Five.
They pled guilty and acknowledged what they had said. I responded, “Well, if they pled guilty, they killed someone in the end and seriously injured someone,” he replied. And if they entered a guilty plea, they entered a not guilty plea.
The complaint claimed that these statements were clearly untrue.
The plaintiffs were later exonerated of all misconduct and never entered a guilty plea to any crime. Furthermore, according to the lawsuit, the victims of the assaults in Central Park were not slain.
Trump’s reaction
However, Trump makes the argument in his filing on Tuesday that his remarks, which were seen by roughly 67 million people, clearly qualify for the protections provided by Pennsylvania’s anti-SLAPP law, which grants immunity for protected public expression on issues of public interest, including remarks made during a political debate.
Anti-SLAPP laws, which stand for Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, are intended to stop people from being intimidated or silenced by the possibility of costly legal action.
Trump further contends that his remarks during the debate did not amount to defamation because they were non-actionable opinions.
The incoming president The letter claims that Trump’s comments during the debate, which referred to Plaintiffs’ prior admissions in the Central Park case, are protected expressions of opinion since they reflect his perception of publicly available information.
Trump also maintained that, when considered in their entirety, his claims were largely accurate.
When President-elect Trump justified his decision to place a newspaper ad at the time, he correctly cited the plaintiffs’ admissions of guilt made following their 1989 arrests. The plaintiffs’ minor points of contention, such as whether they accepted guilt or pled guilty, don’t change the main idea or impact of the comments.
The Central Park Five’s backstory
When Trisha Meili was jogging in Central Park in 1989, the teens at the time were falsely accused of raping her. That same evening, the five were also charged with assaulting two males.
The case detailed how the plaintiffs were individually subjected to hours of coercive interrogation while in police custody, under duress, without a counsel present, and frequently without a parent or guardian present. At first, none of the plaintiffs acknowledged knowing about the attacks in Central Park. Four of the Plaintiffs, however, consented to give written and videotaped testimonies after hours of questioning, in which they falsely acknowledged being present during the assaults.
Following that, the Central Park Five were put on trial, defended their innocence, were found guilty by juries in 1990, and were sentenced to prison. However, court documents stated that they were exonerated decades later when Matias Reyes, the real attacker, confessed to the crime against Meili and DNA evidence unmistakably established that Reyes was the real culprit.
The lawsuit claimed that the plaintiffs’ comments were the result of coercion and duress and that they had no involvement whatsoever in the assaults. Shortly after being questioned, all of the plaintiffs renounced the forced statements they had made.
In the end, the Central Park Five were found not guilty, their convictions were overturned, and New York City paid $41 million to resolve a lawsuit.
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