Central Park Five use Trump's own words from his defamation case against ABC in fight to advance lawsuit

Source: Law & Crime

Dec 19th, 2024, 3:58 pm


The Central Park Five are urging a federal judge in Pennsylvania not to throw out a defamation lawsuit the group filed against Donald Trump over comments he made during the presidential debate earlier this year, arguing the remarks were the culmination of a three-decade “harassment campaign” waged by the president-elect against the falsely-accused quintet.

In a court filing opposing Trump’s motion to have the suit dismissed, attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that Trump’s attempts to “re-frame” his statements as “opinion” and “hyperbolic political rhetoric” were unconvincing.

Thursday’s 38-page response from the plaintiffs quickly highlighted that it was only days after they were arrested and falsely accused of committing a series of brutal assaults that Trump took out a full-page advertisement in five New York City newspapers calling for the then-juveniles to be executed.

“Defendant declared in this Ad that he ‘hate[s]’ Plaintiffs and ‘always will,’ he wants them to ‘suffer,’ and he is ‘looking to punish them,'” the filing states. “In the years since, Defendant has waged a personal vendetta against Plaintiffs, unleashing a torrent of hateful and false statements about them in newspapers, on television, on social media, and even from the White House lawn. This harassment campaign culminated at the September 10, 2024 presidential debate, where Defendant told an audience of over 67 million Americans that Plaintiffs ‘pled guilty’ to having ‘killed a person.'”

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/startling-proposition-central-park-five-use-trumps-own-words-from-his-defamation-case-against-abc-in-fight-to-advance-lawsuit-against-the-president-elect/