Five men who were wrongly convicted as teenagers in the so-called Central Park Five rape case against joggers sued Donald Trump on Monday. They said the Republican presidential candidate had defamed them by falsely claiming they had killed someone and admitting guilt.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, cites several statements Trump made about the men during his Sept. 10 debate with Democratic candidate Kamala Harris after she criticized Trump for posting a 1989 ad portraying then-then called for teenage defendants to be executed.

“Defendant Trump falsely stated (during the debate) that Plaintiffs murdered an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,” the civil suit states.

“Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently acquitted of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, the victims of the Central Park attacks were not killed,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s conduct toward the men during the debate was “part of an ongoing pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct dating back several years, and thus constitutes an ongoing tort.”

The prosecutors in the case, who now call themselves the Acquitted Five, are Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise. Salaam is a member of the New York City Council.

Their lawsuit, which alleges claims of defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress, seeks damages in excess of $75,000, with total compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement released by the campaign: “This is yet another frivolous election interference lawsuit filed by desperate left-wing activists in an attempt to distract the American people from Kamala Harris’ dangerously liberal agenda. failed campaign.”

“Lyin’ Kamala’s allies’ frantic efforts to interfere in the election are going nowhere and President Trump is dominating as he marches to a historic victory for the American people on November 5,” Cheung said.

The lawsuit notes that the men, while still teenagers, were convicted at trials of a series of assaults that took place in New York City’s Central Park in April 1989. The men were between 14 and 16 years old at the time and spent years through New York’s Central Park. prison after their conviction.

Less than two weeks after the assault on a jogger in the park, for which the teens were charged, Trump paid for a full-page ad in New York newspapers that “referenced the Central Park assaults without specifically identifying the suspects and called for the city to New York to “deliver a message loud and clear to those who seek to murder our citizens and terrorize New York: BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY AND BRING BACK OUR POLICE,” the complaint said.

All five men were acquitted in 2002 of the claim that they raped the jogger based on newly discovered DNA evidence.

A year later, the men sued New York City for false arrest, malicious prosecution and racially motivated conspiracy. The city settled the lawsuit more than a decade later by agreeing to pay the men $41 million, a deal that Trump called a “disgrace” in a newspaper op-ed that year.

During the presidential debate in September, Harris said, “Let’s not forget that this is the same person (Trump) 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.”

“I took out a full-page advertisement calling for their execution,” Harris added, according to the complaint.

Trump responded to Harris by saying, “They admitted — they said they pleaded guilty.”

“And I said, if they pleaded guilty, they seriously hurt someone and ultimately killed a person. And if they pleaded guilty – then they pleaded not guilty,” Trump said.

Trump was previously held liable in two separate lawsuits for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she publicly alleged he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. Juries awarded Carroll a total of $88.3 million in damages after trials in those cases, including punitive damages after he found he sexually assaulted the writer.

Trump is appealing the verdicts in these cases, which were filed in federal court in Manhattan.