Latest news with #Beetlestone
CNBC
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNBC
Trump loses latest bid to get Central Park Five defamation lawsuit tossed
A federal judge on Friday dealt another blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to throw out a defamation lawsuit against him filed by plaintiffs formerly known as the Central Park Five. U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone said that Pennsylvania's Anti-SLAPP law, designed to protect defendants from lawsuits targeting protected speech, does not apply in federal court, rejecting Trump's motion to dismiss the case. "The only issue before the Court is whether Plaintiffs' claims for defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress ("IIED") can survive given Pennsylvania's Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, otherwise known as its Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation Statute," Beetlestone wrote in a 13-page filing. "Pennsylvania's Anti-SLAPP Statute (a state law) does not apply here, in federal court," she wrote in the filing, adding: "Accordingly, Defendant's Motion shall be denied." Five men who as teenagers were wrongfully convicted in the so-called Central Park Five jogger rape case sued Trump in October, accusing the then-Republican presidential nominee of defaming them. They cited a number of statements Trump made during his Sept. 10 presidential debate against former Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing him of falsely stating that the men killed somebody and pled guilty to the crime. "These statements are demonstrably false," they wrote in their filing against Trump. The five men — Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray and Korey Wise — spent years in prison for the rape and assault of a white female jogger, a crime they were later exonerated of and did not commit. Trump has tried to dismiss the defamation lawsuit against him, but has not been successful. Judge Beetlestone in April also threw out Trump's motion to dismiss the case against him in a different filing.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Dealt Huge Blow in Central Park Five Defamation Lawsuit
A federal judge on Thursday denied Donald Trump's motion to dismiss a new defamation lawsuit from the Central Park Five. In a 20-page filing, Pennsylvania District Court Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled that Trump's recent comments about the group of five Back and Hispanic men, who were wrongly convicted of assault and rape in 1989, could not be defended as 'substantially true.' The lawsuit was filed in October 2024 after a 2024 presidential debate, during which Kamala Harris reminded viewers that Trump was 'the same individual who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times 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.' Trump responded, claiming that 'a lot of people, including Mayor 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. But this is a person that has to stretch back years, 40, 50 years ago because there's nothing now,' Trump said. Beetlestone ruled that Trump's statements could be 'objectively determined' to be false, so his statement could be construed as fact, not opinion. 'Here, Plaintiffs were not just in the process of being exonerated, their name had been cleared for over twenty years, so Defendant cannot argue that stating that they pleaded guilty to crimes is substantially true, when the truth is that Plaintiffs are not guilty at all of those crimes,' she wrote. She added that the plaintiffs had 'plausibly alleged actual malice' by demonstrating that Trump was 'closely familiar' with the Central Park Five's not-guilty plea, conviction, and subsequent exoneration and therefore knew that they were not guilty and had not hurt or killed anyone at all. Beetlestone ruled to dismiss the plaintiffs' claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and a defamation-by-implication theory included in their original complaint. She wrote that they would be permitted to amend their complaint to omit those arguments.
