Black leaders call out Trump’s criminal justice contradictions as he rails against guilty verdict

NEW YORK (AP) — As Donald Trump lambasted the guilty verdict of his hush money trial this week, he stood inside a Manhattan courthouse that was the site of one of the most notorious examples of injustice in recent New York history. And he had a part in that.

It’s the same courthouse where five Black and Latino youths were wrongly convicted 34 years ago in the beating and rape of a white female jogger. The former president famously took out a newspaper ad in New York City in the aftermath of the 1989 attack calling for the execution of the accused in a case that roiled racial tensions locally and that many point to as evidence of a criminal justice system prejudiced against defendants of color.

But on Friday, a day after making history as the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes in a court of law, Trump blasted that same criminal justice system as corrupt and rigged against him.

“This is a scam,” he said of the case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office led by Alvin Bragg, the first Black person in the role, and overseen by Judge Juan Merchan, who is of Colombian descent.

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