A summons in a defamation case against Donald Trump was served at Mar-a-Lago last month, an Election Day court filing has revealed.
The summons in the lawsuit brought by the Central Park Five, now often referred to as the Exonerated Five, was served to Trump's director of security, Dan Freeman, on behalf of the former president at the Florida resort at 4:10 p.m. on October 24, the filing seen by Newsweek showed.
Trump was campaigning in the Sun Belt that day, holding a rally in Tempe, Arizona, that afternoon, visiting a Cuban restaurant in Las Vegas, and phoning in to a televised town hall in Detroit to ask his running mate, Senator JD Vance, "How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?"
In the suit initially filed last month, the exonerated group -- Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise -- allege Trump, "falsely stated that Plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime," during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris on September 10.
Trump had said: "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."
The five were wrongfully convicted in 1989 of a brutal assault on a New York jogger in Central Park. They were later all exonerated, having serving between five and 13 years in prison, after the true attacker confessed and was linked to the crime by DNA evidence.
In their complaint, they said Trump made statements that "are demonstrably false. Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further, the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed."
Shortly after it was filed on October 21, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the suit, "just 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 and failing campaign."
Newsweek has contacted Trump's campaign and attorneys for comment via email.
The service of the summons, a requirement of civil suits, means Trump now has until November 15 to respond, a little more than two months before Inauguration Day when either he or Kamala Harris will begin their presidency.
The summons from October 24 say that Trump must "serve on the plaintiff an answer to the attached complaint or a motion under Rule 12 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The answer or motion must be served on the plaintiff or plaintiff's attorney..."
It then states: "If you fail to respond, judgment by default will be entered against you for the relief demanded in the complaint. You also must file your answer or motion with the court."
The relief demanded by the complaint is "as yet unliquidated sum in excess of $75,000, and such other relief as this Court deems just," as stated in the initial court filing.
The court filing on Tuesday shows that Trump is aware of the suit, per Freeman who said within the summons return that he has informed Trump of the summons and the contents of the suit.
The plaintiffs have also asked for a trial by jury in their defamation suit. At this time, there is no current information on the next steps in this trial.