As Donald Trump criticized the guilty verdict of his secret trial, he stood in a Manhattan courtroom that has been the scene of one of the most infamous examples of injustice in New York’s recent history. And he participated in that.
It’s the same court where five young Black and Latino men were wrongfully convicted 34 years ago for beating and raping a white jogger. The former president placed an ad in a New York City newspaper after the 1989 attack, calling for the execution. of the defendants in a case that stoked racial tensions and that many see as evidence of a criminal justice formula biased and opposed to acusados. de color.
But on Friday, a day after making history as the first former U. S. president convicted of criminal offenses in court, Trump lashed out at that same criminal justice system, calling it corrupt and rigged.
“It’s a scam,” he said of the case filed with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, headed by Alvin Bragg, the first black man to hold the position, and overseen by Judge Juan M. Merchán, of Colombian origin.
“It is a rigged trial. It has been in this place. We’ve had this judge,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said Friday from Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Some black Americans found it ironic that Trump would criticize the injustice of his own conviction, in a court where five black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted in a case Trump so vehemently supported.
The Central Park Five affair was Trump’s first foray into crime-fighting politics, a prelude to his fierce populist political persona. For many, Trump has resorted to whistles and overtly racist rhetoric in both chapters of his public life.
But lately, in his dealings with the Black and Latino communities, Trump has followed the language of proponents of judicial reform.
He says African-Americans and Latinos can identify with him because prosecutors will prosecute him as they have many men and boys in their communities.
“The conviction of Donald Trump is going to be a challenge for him along with a lot of other black people because, guess what, a lot of black people don’t like other people who violate our laws against criminals,” said Maya Wiley, a civilian from New York. Human rights lawyer and executive director of Leadership. Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
“Black people are disproportionately victims of crime. It is not that they are on the side of those convicted of a crime.
Wiley, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City in 2021, said the city’s Black and Latino citizens also echoed Trump’s comments about the Central Park corridors case.
“They have not forgotten the fact that Donald Trump ran a full-page ad suggesting the death penalty for the Central Park Five, who were exonerated and suffered an abusive system,” Wiley said.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, an advocate for the exonerated men, called Trump’s conviction a symbolic measure of justice for them.
“This is the same construction that Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise entered, day in and day out, as they underwent a show trial for a crime they did not commit,” Sharpton said right after the verdict. has been read.
“Now the shoe is on the foot. Donald Trump is the criminal and those five men are exonerated,” he said.
Salaam, who won a seat on the New York City Council last year, said he was not satisfied with the former president’s guilty verdict “even if Donald Trump intended to execute me, even if it proved that I am innocent. “
Salaam and the other youths had their convictions overturned in 2002 after evidence linked another user to the crime. Trump refused in 2019 to the exonerated men.
“We are proud that today the formula worked,” Salaam wrote on social media platform X on Thursday. “But we’re dark because we Americans have a former president who has been convicted on 34 separate counts of crime. “
“We have to do more than that. Because we are more than that,” he wrote.
Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the civil rights organization Advancement Project Action Fund, said Trump has not been subjected to the kind of unfair redress in the criminal justice formula that Black and Latino communities are all too familiar with.
“He wasn’t violently arrested by police, he didn’t spend a night on Rikers Island because he couldn’t afford bail, he didn’t even go to jail. He could only pay a battery of lawyers to constitute him and he may simply pay to appeal,” Dianis said.
Racial justice advocates are also using this historic moment to remind the public that Trump and his affiliates attempted to overturn the will of the electorate by challenging the effects of the 2020 presidential election in districts with a gigantic Black and Latino majority.
The secret trial is just one component of a larger narrative around election justice, said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, who called the verdict against Trump “a monumental step toward justice for the American people. “
“Whether an attempt to ruin an election or to overthrow our government, one thing has long been evident: Donald Trump is unfit to constitute American democracy,” Johnson said after Thursday’s verdict.
Johnson, who heads the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, said Trump’s criminal conviction disqualifies him from the Oval Office.
“Given that Black Americans have been denied their fundamental human rights because of less egregious crimes, any breakthrough in Donald Trump’s nomination for president would be a blatant breakthrough in white supremacist politics,” he said.
Sharpton noted that he rejoiced at the verdict.
“Instead, celebrate by voting for leaders who support democracy, not those who need to end it. “
Associated Press Morrison reported from New York, Brown from Washington. AP Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, N. Y. , contributed to this report.
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