Why are the Central Park Five suing Donald Trump?

In recent comments, the former president tried to justify calling for their execution in 1989 by falsely claiming that they had pled guilty.

In 1990, five Black and Latino teenagers — Kevin Richardson (14), Raymond Santana (14), Antron McCray (15), Yusef Salaam (15) and Korey Wise (16) — who became known as the Central Park Five, were wrongly convicted for attacking and raping a jogger, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white woman was in a coma for 12 days following the incident in April 1989.

Subsequently exonerated, the five — all of them now in their 50s — now find themselves in the middle of another legal battle: On Monday, the five men filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania suing former President Donald Trump, accusing him of “false and defamatory” statements he made during the presidential debate in September with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump is the Republican candidate for the November election, while Harris is the Democratic Party’s nominee.

It’s the latest chapter in a long-running saga involving the Central Park Five (now sometimes known as the “Exonerated Five”) and Trump — who once called for their execution in an infamous series of advertisements.

So what’s the latest lawsuit about, how has the Trump campaign responded and what’s Trump’s history with the Central Park Five?

At the September debate, Trump said that at the time of the interrogation process in 1989 the teenagers “admitted – they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.”