Blog

(PHILADELPHIA) — Members of the “Central Park Five” filed a defamation suit against former President Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of spreading “false, misleading and defamatory” statements about their 1989 case during the Sept. 10 ABC News presidential debate, according to a new court filing.

Attorneys representing the five men — Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise — filed their civil suit against Trump in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking monetary damages over his statements, which they say have caused them “severe emotional distress and reputational damage.”

The five men, then teenagers, were accused of the violent rape of a female jogger in Central Park in April 1989. The five, who always maintained their innocence, were convicted and served years in prison. A decade after the attack, a different man confessed to the crime, which was confirmed through DNA analysis.

During the debate, Trump was responding to a statement from Vice President Kamala Harris in which she revisited his full-page ad in The New York Times in the wake of the incident that called for the execution of the Central Park Five when he said the following: “[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 Five. 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 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.

“Defendant Trump’s conduct at the September 10 debate was extreme and outrageous, and it was intended to cause severe emotional distress to Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit stated.

Trump’s attorneys have not yet entered an appearance on the court docket as of Monday morning. 

“This is just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said in response to an inquiry about the lawsuit.

According to the court filing, one of the Central Park Five members, Salaam, was actually present at the debate and sought to confront Trump over his statements in the spin room afterward.

Salaam says he repeatedly shouted questions to Trump, saying, “Will you apologize to the Exonerated Five?” and, “Sir, what do you say to a member of the Central Park Five, sir?”

Trump reportedly responded to him at one point, “Ah, you’re on my side then,” to which Salaam responded, “No, no, no, I’m not on your side.”

“Plaintiff Salaam was attempting to politely dialogue with Defendant Trump about the false and defamatory statements that Defendant Trump had made about Plaintiffs less than an hour earlier, but Defendant Trump refused to engage with him in dialogue,” the lawsuit stated.

The five men’s convictions were vacated in 2002 and Wise, who was still in prison at the time, was released early. The group sued New York City in 2003 and after a decadelong standstill, the lawsuit was settled for $41 million. The city did not admit to any misconduct by its police department or prosecutors.

Salaam was elected to the New York City Council last year, representing northern Manhattan, including Harlem, East Harlem, parts of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(ASHEVILLE, N.C.) — Twenty-six people remain unaccounted for in hard-hit North Carolina, weeks after the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene, officials said Monday.

Last week, 92 people were unaccounted for, officials said.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, wreaking havoc across the Southeast from Florida to Virginia. Helene destroyed homes and roads, stranded residents without cellphone service and water, and claimed the lives of nearly 250 people throughout the Southeast.

At least 95 of Helene’s fatalities were in North Carolina, officials said. Gov. Roy Cooper called Helene “the deadliest and most devastating storm” in the state’s history.

After misinformation spread about recovery efforts and the availability of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds in North Carolina, Cooper stressed at Monday’s news conference that the “deliberate disinformation and misinformation … needs to stop.”

“It hurts the very people we are all trying to help,” he said. “It discourages and makes people fearful of signing up for help. It enables scam artists and it hurts the morale of government officials, first responders and soldiers who are on the ground trying to help.”

Former President Donald Trump is set to visit to the hard-hit city of Asheville on Monday to survey damage from the storm.

Cooper said he’s asking the former president to “not share lies or misinformation while he is here.”

Cooper said the White House “responded quickly and positively to our request from FEMA, which has had 1,400 staff on the ground and has registered 206,000 people for individual assistance, and distributed $124 million directly to people who need it.”

“As for long-term recovery, state and local government will be all in, along with the federal government,” Cooper said. “This will take billions of dollars and years of bipartisan focus from everyone working together to make it happen — from new roads and bridges to public building to water supplies to people’s homes.”

FEMA is now launching a “new initiative” to hire community liaisons in North Carolina’s impacted counties, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced Monday.

“We know that so many people have temporarily lost their jobs. We know that others just want to be able to give back, and we want to help keep people in these communities while they recover,” she said. “So these new community liaisons are going to work alongside us at FEMA to make sure that they are the local voice, the trusted voice in their community, and that they can share with us the local considerations and the concerns, so we can include them as part of this recovery. They’re going to be embedded in every county, working directly with county administrators, mayors and community leaders, bridging their concerns with our FEMA staff. And these jobs are available for people to apply right now.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(HOUSTON) — Four people, including a child, were killed when a helicopter crashed into a radio tower in Houston, officials said.

The crash happened just before 8 p.m. Sunday when a private aircraft struck a radio tower in Houston’s Second Ward, Houston police said.

All four people on the helicopter were killed. No one on the ground was injured, officials said.

No homes or structures were impacted except for the radio tower, police said, but a fire that erupted from the crash spanned two to three blocks.

Houston Fire Department officials extinguished the fire after the crash.

Houston police Lt. Jonathan French said Monday he was thankful no one on the ground was hurt.

“We want to keep the families and our victims in mind right now. This is a horrible tragedy,” he said, adding, “This could have been much worse.”

The crash is being investigated by Houston authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The helicopter was operating as an air tour flight, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(HOUSTON) — Four people, including a child, were killed when a helicopter crashed into a radio tower in Houston, officials said.

The crash happened just before 8 p.m. Sunday when a private aircraft struck a radio tower in Houston’s Second Ward, Houston police said.

All four people on the helicopter were killed. No one on the ground was injured, officials said.

No homes or structures were impacted except for the radio tower, police said, but a fire that erupted from the crash spanned two to three blocks.

Houston Fire Department officials extinguished the fire after the crash.

The crash is being investigated by Houston authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The helicopter was operating as an air tour flight, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.