A member of the exonerated Central Park Five branded Donald Trump‘s arrest ‘karma’ as he mimicked the former president’s full-page ads three decades ago that called for his execution.
Yusef Salaam, who is now a candidate for the New York City Council, slammed the embattled 2024 hopeful for ‘claiming only innocence for himself’ following a ‘disastrous presidency’.
In 1989, Salaam was among five black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly suspected and convicted of sexually assaulting a white woman in Manhattan’s Central Park.
In response to the attack, Trump, then a powerful New York real estate mogul, bought out full page ads in several newspapers calling on the state to re-introduce the death penalty over the case. Despite the men all being exonerated in the years since, Trump has never apologized for running the ads.
After Trump’s arrest Tuesday, Saleem also hit out at Trump in a tweet, saying: ‘For those asking about my statement on the indictment of Donald Trump – who never said sorry for calling for my execution – here it is: Karma.’
Yusef Salaam, pictured in August 1990, mimicked Donald Trump’s full page ads thirty years after the former president called for his execution in the infamous Central Park Five case
Following Trump’s landmark arrest Tuesday, Salaam took aim at the former president, including the anguish he went through to clear his name despite Trump’s insistence of his guilt.
Noting that Trump reportedly spent $85,000 to run full page ads against the Central Park Five in a number of New York newspapers, Salaam said in his ad that Trump has never apologized for doing so, ‘even after someone else confessed to and was convicted of the crime’.
‘Instead, Mr. Trump has often doubled down,’ he continued, highlighting several times the former president has insisted on his stance after being confronted.
While in the White House in 2019, Trump was asked about his calls for the death penalty thirty years before, to which he responded: ‘You have people on both sides of that… they admitted their guilt.’
Another of the other instances pointed to by Saleem noted that in 2013, when a documentary about the group members’ exoneration was released, Trump slammed it as ‘a one-sided piece of garbage’, and when asked about the men’s innocence, he said: ‘Innocent of what?’
In a separate incident in 2014, after the Central Park Five members reached a settlement with the City of New York over the wrongful arrest, Trump’s responded by remarking that ‘settling doesn’t mean innocence.’
In a scathing 1989 full page ad, Donald Trump called for the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York in response to the Central Park Five case
Following Trump’s arrest Tuesday, Yusef Saleem, one of the members of the Central Park Five, mimicked Trump’s letter as he mocked him for his ‘disastrous presidency’
In his 1989 ad, Trump used his now-synonymous all-caps as he titled the page: ‘BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE’.
‘I want to hate these murderers and I always will,’ he continued in the piece. ‘I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.’
In his response to Trump’s arrest, Salaam said: ‘Now, after several decades and an unfortunate and disastrous presidency, we all know exactly who Donald J. Trump is – a man who seeks to deny justice and fairness for others, while claiming only innocence for himself.’
The members of the Central Park Five speak at the 2019 BET Awards. Pictured, left to right: Korey Wise, Raymond Sanatana Jr, Yusef Saleem, Antron McCray, and Kevin Richardson
Yusef Salaam, back right, pictured leaving court in June, 1990
Following his scathing rebuke of Trump’s arrest, Salaam used the rest of his ad to argue that many of the issues that led to his wrongful arrest 30 years ago remain today.
‘I have lived through a form of trauma that many of us experience in some way every day throughout our country,’ he said.
‘My past is an example of systemic oppression by the injustice system.
‘But the problems our community faced when my name was slashed across the newspapers a generation ago – inadequate housing, underfunded schools, public safety concerns, and a lack of good jobs – became worse during Donald Trump’s time in office.’
Salaam said that he is running for office himself to ‘change that’, as he condemned Trump’s actions as president, such as during the January 6 riot, as ‘an attack on our safety’.
‘Now that you have been indicted and are facing criminal charges, I do not resort to hatred, bias or racism – as you once did,’ he added.
‘Even though thirty-four years ago you effectively called for my death and the death of four other innocent children, I wish you no harm.’
Salaam said he was putting his ‘faith in the judicial system’ to find the truth, and after hitting out at Trump for ‘seeking to obliterate’ civil liberties, he maintained hope that ‘you get what the Exonerated Five did not get – a presumption of innocence and a fair trial’.
‘And if the charges are proven and you are found guilty, I hope that you endure whatever penalties are imposed with the same strength and dignity that the Exonerated Five showed as we served our punishment for a crime we did not commit.’
Donald Trump pictured in his arraignment hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records, particularly stemming from an alleged hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
He faces a maximum sentence of 136 years behind bars for the alleged offences, which also related to a $30,000 payoff to a doorman trying to sell information about a child that Trump allegedly fathered out of wedlock and $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
However, even if convicted on all charges, it’s unlikely Trump would be sentenced to the full time in prison. Each charge is a low-level felony that carries a maximum of four years in prison for each count.
