This combination of file photos shows then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, left, speaking at a campaign rally, Oct. 18, 2024, in Detroit, and former Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, speaking at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wis., Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photos/ Evan Vucci, Susan Walsh).
In a significant legal maneuver, former President Donald Trump has fortified his appellate team as he approaches the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asserting immunity against a defamation lawsuit filed by the exonerated Central Park Five. Trump appears unfazed by the implications of his past allegations, which wrongfully implicated them in a notorious crime.
The case dates back to a 2024 debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which prompted a lawsuit from Antron Brown, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam. Trump had claimed during the debate that the plaintiffs were responsible for a murder to which they had supposedly confessed. However, these men were initially accused, at a young age, of the brutal 1989 rape of jogger Trisha Meili in Central Park, New York City.
The lawsuit highlights the coercive nature of the original police interrogations. According to the plaintiffs, each was subjected to lengthy questioning without legal counsel or consistent parental presence, leading to coerced confessions. “Plaintiffs all initially denied having any knowledge of the Central Park assaults,” the lawsuit details, but under intense pressure, four eventually provided false admissions on tape.
Following their wrongful convictions in 1990, the Central Park Five spent years in prison before being exonerated. Their innocence was finally affirmed when Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, and DNA evidence irrefutably confirmed Reyes as the true assailant, as documented in court records.
In July 2025, Trump challenged a Pennsylvania federal judge’s decision that allowed the defamation suit to proceed, arguing it should be dismissed. His legal team contends that the initial ruling was a mistake, pushing for the case to be thrown out as they navigate the complexities of this high-profile legal battle.
The five did not plead guilty and were not accused of killing anyone — yet, during the nationally televised presidential debate with Harris, Trump 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.”
The remarks were a response to Harris’ statement that throughout his life and career, Trump has “attempted to use race to divide the American people,” and that an example of this was the “full-page ad” he placed in the New York Times and elsewhere in 1989 “calling for the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent — the Central Park Five — took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.”
In his prior responses to the lawsuit, Trump attempted to grapple with the “killed a person” statement, but not in his latest brief.
The brief acknowledged that there was no killing, but reduced the defamation claim to “two words” — “pled guilty”:
During that debate, Vice President Harris falsely accused President Trump of using “race to divide the American people.” To support that empty charge, she invoked a newspaper advertisement President Trump had taken out thirty-five years earlier, after a brutal rape and assault was committed in Central Park. The advertisement concerned the five men—Appellees here—who had confessed to police but had not pleaded guilty in court. President Trump responded that Harris had to reach back “many, many years” because there was “nothing” to support her present accusation. Recalling the events surrounding the advertisement, he stated: “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.”
Those sentences are the entire basis for this meritless suit. Appellees wrongly claim that the President’s use of “pled guilty,” rather than “confessed,” defamed them, placed them in a false light, and intentionally inflicted emotional distress. They further wrongly allege that those two words caused “post-traumatic stress disorder,” “neck pain,” “shortness of breath,” “trembling,” “numbness,” and other injuries.
Calling these claims “ridiculous,” Trump asked the 3rd Circuit to find that Pennsylvania’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) — an anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (anti-SLAPP) statute — grants him “immunity” from federal “litigation targeting speech on matters of public significance and threatening to chill participation in public debate.”
“The district court’s reasoning was truly bizarre,” the Trump brief said of U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone’s decision not to apply UPEPA in federal court. “That was error.”
When the judge refused to toss the case, she wrote Trump’s “statement must be construed as one of fact, not opinion.”
“In fact, none of [the Central Park Five] pleaded guilty and none of them were charged with killing anyone,” said the judge, a Barack Obama appointee.