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      Central Park Five’s Yusef Salaam wins Democratic city council primary

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      Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five, is all but assured of a seat on the New York city council after being confirmed as the winner of a Democratic primary, an improbable feat for a political novice who was wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned as a teenager for the rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park.Additional votes released on Wednesday showed Salaam as the clear winner of the primary to represent Central Harlem, which took place last week.“I am here because, Harlem, you believed in me,” he said in his victory speech.Salaam, now 49, and four other Black and Latino teens became known as the Central Park Five after their arrest in 1985 over the headline-grabbing rape of a white jogger, one of the most notorious and racially fraught crimes in New York history.Salaam served nearly seven years in prison before the group was exonerated through DNA evidence.He has now prevailed over two veterans, New York assembly members Inez Dickens, 73, and Al Taylor, 65. The incumbent, the democratic socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.Salaam declared victory with his vote tally barely exceeding 50%, though an unknown number of absentee ballots were yet to be counted. But his lead over Dickens seemed insurmountable and she and Taylor conceded.While all three candidates focused on promoting affordable housing, controlling gentrification and easing poverty, Salaam capitalized on his celebrity in neighborhoods that consider the Central Park Five to be living symbols of the injustices faced by the Black and Latino residents who make up about three-quarters of the district’s population.Zambi Mwendwa said she voted for Salaam because he is “a new face”, not because of the injustice in his past.“I’ve heard him talk. He seems to be talking about the things I care about,” Mwendwa said.But for others, Salaam’s status as a member of the Central Park Five was a motivating factor.“He comes from the neighborhood, and he was incarcerated then turned himself around,” Carnation France said. “He’s trying to do something for the people.”Salaam’s lack of experience in public office might have worked in his favor, according to Amani Wells-Onyioha, a partner at Sole Strategies, which worked on Salaam’s behalf.“In a time like this, when people are looking for a hero, they’re looking for somebody who can relate to them,” Wells-Onyioha said. “I think people saw him as a survivor. He was vindicated and the system eventually ended up working out for him.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSalaam moved to Georgia after he was released and became an activist, speaker, author and poet. He returned to New York in December.He was 15 when he was arrested with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, who served between five and 12 years in prison before prosecutors agreed to re-examine the case.DNA evidence and a confession linked a serial rapist and murderer to the attack, but he was not prosecuted as too much time had passed. The convictions were vacated in 2002 and the city agreed to pay the exonerated men a combined $41m.In 2012 a Ken Burns documentary, The Central Park Five, rekindled public attention. In 2019 a TV miniseries, When They See Us, drew attention again, just before the Black Lives Matter movement launched in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.Burns and his co-directors applauded Harlem voters for “electing a man who has dedicated his life to reconciliation”.Donald Trump, who in 1989 placed ads in four newspapers demanding “Bring Back the Death Penalty” for the Central Park Five, later refused to apologize, saying all five pleaded guilty, a reference to coerced confessions. Salaam reminded voters of that in April, putting out his own full-page ad, headlined “Bring Back Justice & Fairness”, in response to one of Trump’s own indictments. More

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      Central Park Five’s Yusef Salaam declares victory in city council primary

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      Yusef Salaam, who as a child was part of a group of teenagers wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned for the rape of a woman jogging in New York’s Central Park, has declared victory in a Democratic primary for a city council seat in New York – giving him a very good chance of representing a Harlem district as an elected official.Salaam faced two veteran politicians, New York state assembly members Al Taylor, 65, and Inez Dickens, 73, in the race for a seat representing part of the majority-Black uptown Manhattan neighborhood. The incumbent, democratic socialist Kristin Richard Jordan, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.The contest was taking place more than two decades after Salaam and four other men – then known as the Central Park Five, now often called the Exonerated Five – were cleared of the crime using DNA evidence.It was one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes, inflamed when Donald Trump, then best known as a flamboyant real estate mogul in the city and later to become US president, took out newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the five.The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the primary race and the election’s outcome might not be certain for days because of New York’s ranked-choice voting rules. That system kicks in if no candidate claims more than 50% of the total vote.It was unclear early on Wednesday whether Salaam would stay above that threshold. With about 95% of votes counted, Salaam had a little less than 51% of the vote, with Dickens trailing substantially in second place.Salaam nonetheless declared victory in a speech to supporters late on Tuesday.“What has happened in this campaign has restored my faith in knowing that I was born for this,” he said.Salaam likened his youthful imprisonment to being “kidnapped”, but he also called his nearly seven years in prison a gift that allowed him to see a racially unjust criminal justice system from the “belly of the beast”.“I am here because, Harlem, you believed in me,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDickens conceded late on Tuesday, but promised to “continue to fight for what my community needs”.If Salaam were to prevail in the primary it would virtually assure him a general election victory in a district unlikely to elect a Republican. It is his first time seeking public office.Salaam was 15 when he was arrested in 1989 and accused, along with four other Black and brown teenagers – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise – of beating and raping a white woman in Central Park, Trisha Meile.Members of the group served between five and 12 years in prison before prosecutors agreed to re-examine the case. DNA evidence and a confession ultimately linked a serial rapist and murderer to the Central Park attack. The convictions were vacated in 2002 and the city ultimately agreed in a legal settlement to pay the exonerated men $41m. More

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      George Santos mystery bail guarantors to be revealed on Thursday

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      The two people who guaranteed bail for George Santos will have their names publicly revealed, a federal judge ruled, rejecting the indicted Republican congressman’s claim that the disclosure could threaten the guarantors’ safety.Joanna Seybert, a US district judge in Central Islip, New York, said the names would be made public on Thursday at 12pm ET.Seybert said Santos could in the meantime try to modify the terms of his release if his guarantors, who he has suggested are family members, withdraw their $500,000 guarantee.Santos, 34, has expressed a willingness to go to jail rather than release the names.The first-term congressman has pleaded not guilty to a 13-count indictment accusing him of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Following his election, Santos drew huge criticism, including bipartisan calls that he resign, after reports that he had lied about much of his personal and professional background.Amid numerous stories detailing a picaresque political rise, Santos has denied wrongdoing but admitted to fabricating large parts of his résumé.Republican leaders in the House have not pushed Santos to quit. As he took his seat in Congress in January, he supported Kevin McCarthy of California through 15 votes for the position of speaker. McCarthy must rely on a narrow majority, prey to the far right of the party.Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Santos, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the order to reveal the identities of the guarantors.Santos appealed a 6 June ruling by a federal magistrate judge to identify the guarantors.At least 11 media organizations sought the names, citing public interest. According to a court filing, the House ethics committee also wants the names, to determine whether Santos violated rules on gifts.Murray has said Santos and his staff have been subjected to a “media frenzy and hateful attacks” since the congressman’s indictment became public on 9 May, and it was “reasonable” to believe his bail guarantors might face the same treatment. More

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      Digested week: A beer with Mike Pence to figure out what his deal is? Possibly …

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      MondayIn a reversal of the who-would-you-most-like-to-have-a-drink-with test, candidates declaring for the Republican presidential race this week presented as so singularly unappetising as to beg the question who among them would you leave the bar to avoid? Trump is not, weirdly, at the top of this list, since when he cares to use it one knows his charm is considerable. Mike Pence, who declared his candidacy on Monday and remains enduringly weird, would definitely break the top three, although a small part of me would like to take a crack, over a beer, at figuring out what his deal is. The former vice-president and evangelical Christian’s very clenched personality and eagerness to be photographed at the weekend in leathers on a Harley-Davidson, is suggestive of a range of possibilities.Also throwing his hat into the ring this week is Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and, for my money, the least appealing candidate in the current Republican lineup, even taking into account Ron DeSantis. Christie, you may remember, was for a hot minute in 2016 spoken of as a credible centrist Republican before everyone remembered who he was. (My favourite Christie story is the one from 2017 when he was snapped from a news helicopter enjoying a deserted beach with his family during a state-wide shutdown when the beaches were closed.) In the years since, he has flip-flopped between craven appeasement and condemnation of Trump and is now running – hollow laugh – as a moral standard-bearer on the strength of his objection to the events surrounding the storming of the US Capitol on January 6.Other candidates in the race include the requisite comedy multimillionaire who has never held office – in this case, the former pharmaceutical company CEO Vivek Ramaswamy whose manifesto seems to be the single word “anti-woke” – and a lone woman, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. Described by the former CNN host Don Lemon earlier this year as a woman who “isn’t in her prime”, Haley, at 51, is among the youngest of the candidates. There are reasons to dislike Haley (“America is not racist”) as strong as any triggered by the rest of the field, but assuredly, that isn’t one of them.TuesdayAs hot takes continue to fly around in the wake of Hannah Gadsby’s “disastrous” (ARTnews), “silly” (New York Times) curated exhibition about Picasso at the Brooklyn Museum, let’s turn instead to Françoise Gilot, whose death at the age of 101 was announced on Tuesday. Gilot was an artist, an icon in her own right and – there’s no avoiding her connection to the man, although it was the source of career-long irritation to her – the only one of Picasso’s lovers ever to walk out on him. I met her a few years ago in her apartment on the Upper West Side where she presented with the kind of fanatical chic only French women of a certain age can pull off. She wasn’t interested in false modesty. “I was considered astonishingly good,” she said of herself as a young artist. And she wasn’t sentimental about the past. “I have to admit,” she told me, “that I was never so much in love with anyone that I could not consider my own plan as interesting.” When I asked if leaving Picasso had been a liberating experience, she looked at me as if I was mad. “No, because I was not a prisoner. I’d been there of my own will and I left of my own will. That’s what I told him once, before I left. I said watch out, because I came when I wanted to, but I will leave when I want. He said, nobody leaves a man like me.” She smiled and the thrill of that moment, 70 years later, disturbed the air in the room. “I said, we’ll see.”WednesdayThe school field trip to Staten Island is cancelled because of air quality in New York, a decision parents bemoan in the morning and revisit at lunchtime when the sky darkens to a Martian glow. The air is nicotine yellow; the sun is an eery orange disc; the cars have their headlights on at midday. While Californians fold their arms and say to New Yorkers “We told you”, people in the city re-mask and shut the windows. Outside my apartment, it smells as if there is a five-alarm fire a block away.The fires burning in Canada cover an area 10 times larger than is usual for this time of year and Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, describes the smoke across the state as “an emergency crisis”, while New Yorkers describe it, variously, as smelling like “a barbecue”, “cigars”, and “9/11”. It smells to me like cigarette smoke, carried 500 miles down wind by an area of low pressure and bringing a forecast to terrify us all.ThursdayThe spectacle of Harry in court this week makes one wince for the gap between what he might hope his appearance will achieve and how things in reality are likely to play out. I don’t mean in terms of judgment, exactly, but as John Crace wrote this week, the court system is an imprecise mechanism for the deliverance of closure and it is more likely to aggravate than soothe your unease. As ever with Harry, one understands that while the Mirror group is the main target of his ire, there is a family dynamic playing out, too. The 38-year-old prince must know how unbearable his father will find the breach of protocol inherent in his appearance in court, not to mention the implied criticism that while the king did nothing, Harry is the only one in the family with the mettle to take on the tabloids. And the corrupt you-asked-for-it logic of justifying the way he was hounded on the basis that he still seeks publicity seems likely to trail him until he retires to Gloucestershire and is never heard of again.FridayDrew Barrymore on the cover of New York magazine this week exhibits a style of celebrity that seems to date back to Lucille Ball. Barrymore, at 48, has a daytime chatshow in the US in which she giggles and sits on her legs and drops her jaw when someone says something mildly diverting, and empathises so busily with her guests that at times she looks in danger of exploding. (This style is described, by the magazine, as “radically intimate” and involves a lot of “manifesting” of “precepts”.) I urge you to look up her recent interview with the actor Melanie Lynskey, during the course of which Barrymore seizes on the alcoholism of Jason Ritter, Lynskey’s husband, with the avidity of a shark happening upon a seal. I would pay good money to see her apply that unruly energy to the field of Republican candidates for president. More

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      Trump hush money trial set for March 2024 during Republican primaries

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      Donald Trump’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin on 25 March 2024, amid the Republican presidential primary and less than than eight months before the general election the former president hopes to contest.The trial date was announced in a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, Trump attending by video link from his Florida home.The judge, Juan Merchan, advised the former president to cancel all other obligations for the duration of the trial, which could last for several weeks.Trump was muted for most of the hearing, which lasted around 15 minutes. The video feed showed the former president sitting and conferring with his lawyer, Todd Blanche, in front of a backdrop of American flags.No other former president has been criminally indicted. Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately comment on news of his trial date.Trump used his Truth Social platform to lash out, claiming his “first amendment rights, ‘freedom of speech’” had been “violated” by the scheduling of the trial “right in the middle of primary season”.“This is exactly what the Radical Left Democrats wanted,” Trump wrote, also claiming “election interference”, a loaded term given widespread agreement that Russia interfered to boost his candidacy in the election he won in 2016.In April, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 charges of falsification of business records, arising from his $130,000 payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 election, to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter.The Tuesday hearing was also held to explain an order forbidding the disclosing of material presented by prosecutors not already publicly known.Merchan’s order bars Trump and his lawyers from disseminating evidence to third parties or posting it to social media, and requires that some sensitive material be kept only by Trump’s lawyers.Prosecutors sought the order soon after Trump was arrested, citing his history of “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about people with whom he has entered legal disputes.Trump claims to be the victim of political witch-hunts meant to silence him as he runs for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden next year.Judge Merchan has stressed he is not seeking to gag Trump, but “bending over backwards and straining to ensure that he is given every opportunity possible to advance his candidacy”.Trump’s court appearance came after news that E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused him of rape and won $5m in a civil suit earlier this month, is seeking additional damages over his comments in a controversial CNN town hall.Just a day after he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, Trump called Carroll a “wack job” who “made-up” her story. He also claimed the trial was “rigged”.In a new filing in New York on Monday, lawyers for Carroll said such conduct “supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor”.Carroll, a magazine columnist, says Trump raped her at a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Her new damages claim comes in a defamation suit filed in federal court in 2019, over Trump’s initial responses to her allegation and separate from the New York case, which was brought under a state law allowing victims of historic sexual crimes to sue their alleged attackers.The federal case had been on hold over the issue of whether Trump was protected because he made the comments in question while president. He does not enjoy that protection relating to comments during the CNN event.According to the New York Times, the new filing says Trump’s statements “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite”.Trump renewed his abuse of Carroll on social media on Monday. As he did so, George Conway, a conservative lawyer and Trump critic, told MSNBC: “The complaint that she’s been amending this time was actually the original complaint from the first lawsuit that she brought in 2019, when … Trump … from the bully pulpit of the Oval Office … basically accused her of being a liar.“And she got $3m for the second libel, in 2022, when he was dumb enough to repeat the first libel. And that time, he wasn’t president, so he didn’t have this legal argument. That’s why the first case went off on a wild goose chase in the appellate court, and now it’s come back.”The 2019 case, Conway said, “already had more damage potential [for Trump] than the case that [Carroll] already won … because he was president at the time.“It was the very, very first libel that he made on E Jean Carroll. And now the fact that he has repeated the libel after being found to have sexually abused her is really, really outrageous. And it is supportive of punitive damages.“This verdict could be greater than the $5m that she got in the first place. Frankly, I hope it is, because I think, at some point he’s got to stop lying about this and stop lying about her. How many times [are we] gonna have to go through this?”Trump’s legal problems extend beyond New York, where he also faces a multimillion-dollar civil suit over his business affairs, lodged by the state attorney general.In Georgia, indictments arising from Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat are expected this summer.In Washington DC, the US justice department continues to investigate Trump’s election subversion, including his incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by attorney general Merrick Garland, is also investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents.Nonetheless, Trump enjoys huge leads over all other Republican presidential candidates. More

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      Mayor pushes plan to force homeless New Yorkers with mental illness to seek help

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      New York mayor Eric Adams has warned that there are “more Jordan Neelys out there”, invoking the name of the unhoused man who was killed on the subway earlier in May as the Democratic mayor pushed his idea to force people with mental illness to access help.In an interview with MSNBC on Sunday, Adams called a dearth of such services – particularly for the city’s unhoused population – “a very real issue”.Neely, 30, died after 24-year-old Daniel Penny put him in a chokehold. Penny, who previously served in the marines, has been charged with manslaughter despite his claims of self-defense in a case that has inflamed racial tensions nationwide because he is white and Neely was Black.Adams said: “The case is now in the hands of the district attorney. I have a lot of confidence in DA [Alvin] Bragg.“I am clear on this. I can’t control the outcome of the case but I can control how we continue to address a very real issue,” Adams said. New York saw street protests demanding Penny’s arrest for Neely’s death.Adams alluded to earlier remarks that he had made calling for the “involuntary removal to the hospitals of those who are unable to take care of basic needs and they are [a] danger to themselves”.In November, Adams announced plans for authorities and emergency services to more aggressively hospitalize mentally ill people involuntarily, even if they do not pose any active threat to others.At the time of the announcement, Adams said his directive was an attempt to clear up a “gray area where policy, law and accountability have not been clear”, and he said that it was an “moral obligation to act” in response to a “crisis we see all around us”.Adams’s announcement faced swift backlash from civil rights organizations, unhoused people and their advocates, with the New York Civil Liberties Union accusing Adams of “playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers and … not dedicating the resources necessary to address the mental health crises”.During Sunday’s interview, Adams urged the codification of involuntary removals, saying: “We need state health to codify what the courts have already ruled. That is the real issue. There are more Jordan Neelys out there.“And when I’m in the subway system speaking with them trying to get them into care, we know that we have to have help on a state level to codify this law.”Last year, the mayor, a former police officer, also announced a new subway safety plan and promised the expansion of outreach teams consisting of clinicians and police officers, which critics also condemned as cracking down against people experiencing mental illness and homelessness.Prior to his death, Neely had been a Michael Jackson impersonator. He had dealt with various mental health problems, including schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder after his mother was murdered by an abusive partner when Neely was 14.According to police, Neely had over 40 prior arrests, and he had previously been accused of punching a fellow subway passenger. He also had over a dozen mental health encounters with police but had apparently not received mental health support.On the day of his death, Neely boarded a train and pleaded to passengers that he was hungry, homeless and thirsty. Penny placed him in a chokehold for several minutes.After Neely’s killing, Republicans have been swift to embrace Penny as he contests charges of second-degree manslaughter. More than $1m has been raised for Penny’s legal defense, largely through the Christian fundraising website GiveSendGo. The site also hosted fundraising efforts for US Capitol attack participants and Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot two racial justice demonstrators dead in Wisconsin and was acquitted of murder charges by claiming self-defense.During Neely’s funeral at a Harlem church on Friday, the civil rights activist and pastor Al Sharpton called for more support for people living with mental illnesses.“A Good Samaritan helps those in trouble. They don’t choke him out,” Sharpton said. “People keep criminalizing people that need help.“They don’t need abuse – they need help.” More

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      Viral story of migrants displacing unhoused veterans from hotels turns out to be false

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      Recent reports about how migrants displaced unhoused veterans from upstate New York hotels have turned out to be false after circulating widely among rightwing media outlets.In an odd saga involving apparently altered receipts and paid unhoused actors, the chief executive of Yerik Israel Toney Foundation (YIT) – a non-profit organization focused on housing military veterans – has been accused of fabricating stories about unhoused veterans getting kicked out of hotels to make space for migrants.Last week, the conservative tabloid New York Post ran a viral story about nearly two dozen unhoused veterans who were purportedly booted out of hotels in upstate New York because of a surge of migrants in search of asylum in the state.The YIT foundation leader, Sharon Toney-Finch, spoke on the record to the outlet, whose story caught the attention of the local Republican state assembly member Brian Maher.Maher told the New York Post that officials’ priority should be serving Americans over “asylum seekers”.However, an investigation by local news outlets Mid Hudson News and the Times Union found several holes in Toney-Finch’s claims.Mid Hudson News reported that Maher provided a copy of a credit card receipt that purportedly showed a payment of more than $37,000 for rooms at the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh for the unhoused veterans who were then allegedly displaced.The Times Union also published an image of the receipt, along with a copy of what appears to be Toney-Finch’s credit card. The pictures were allegedly sent to Maher to confirm that YIT had booked and paid for hotel rooms for the unhoused veterans.However, according to a graphics expert who examined the document, the receipt appeared to have been “altered with smudges behind the darker type and [had] different fonts”, Mid Hudson News reports.Mid Hudson News also contacted the hotel manager who said: “I checked the dollar on the net on the credit card … and the screen shows no transactions. The hotel has no record of this transaction.”He added that not only were there no veterans at the hotel, none were kicked out and no other guests were forced out of their rooms. The manager also told Mid Hudson News that although the hotel does have several asylum seekers there, it was not booked to capacity, and rooms were still available.After concerns that the receipt had been edited, Maher asked Toney-Finch to meet him outside a local bank to provide further evidence that her foundation had indeed paid for the veterans’ rooms. Toney-Finch never appeared, however, the Times Union reported.Additionally, several unhoused men proceeded to tell Mid Hudson News and Times Union that they were actually recruited to pose as displaced veterans.Douglas Tery, Eric Brown and William – who asked Times Union not to use his last name – told the outlet that recruiters had come to their shelter in Poughkeepsie saying that they had work for 15 men between 40 and 60 years old, adding that they were offered $100 for two to three hours of work and that no heavy lifting would be required.Several of the unhoused men from the shelter also told Mid Hudson News that they were asked to take a trip to meet with an elected official and discuss homelessness while being promised food, alcohol and money in return.After they were recruited, the men were driven to a diner where they were joined by Toney-Finch, who told them that they could order freely from the menu, Mid Hudson News reports. “We ate like kings,” said one of the men, who wished to remain anonymous.Following their meal, Toney-Finch gathered the men in a parking lot and asked them to act as if they were veterans who had been displaced, one of the men told Mid Hudson News.The man also said that he and the others were instructed to say: “I am too traumatized to talk about it,” if asked to elaborate.After local reports contesting Toney-Finch’s original claims emerged, Maher told Times Union that he was “devastated and disheartened” following a conversation with Toney-Finch which revealed the story to be a hoax.“She alluded to the fact that, ‘Maybe it’s not exactly how I said it was,’” Maher recounted to Times Union, adding: “This is something I believe hurt a lot of people.”Speaking to the Associated Press, Toney-Finch refused to say that her claims were fabricated and instead said: “We should have verified better.”The Associated Press reported that Toney-Finch abruptly ended the phone call upon further questioning.On Friday, a spokesperson from state attorney general Leticia James’s office told Politico that the office is aware of the situation and is “looking into it”.The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, has condemned the apparent ruse, telling reporters that people seeking asylum “were sent there with a legal contract between the city of New York and a hotel owner”.The governor added: “They are allowed to contract that way and if people want to fabricate stories to undermine the whole process, I think it’s reprehensible.”Meanwhile, after aggressively covering Toney-Finch’s claims as if the channel believed her, Fox News on Saturday issued a rare, on-air correction. Network host Laura Ingraham said: “Turns out the group behind the claim made it up. We have no clue as to why anyone would do such a thing, but we’ll bring you any updates should they come.” More

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      Man sues Giuliani over false arrest after ‘pat’ on back led to assault charge

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      A heckler who was charged with assaulting Rudy Giuliani at a Staten Island grocery store last year – after slapping him on the back and saying, “What’s up, scumbag?” – filed suit against the former New York City mayor and prominent Trump ally on Wednesday, alleging he levied an empty accusation.The lawsuit filed by Daniel Gill in Manhattan federal court also names as defendants the city and several police officers.It says the defendants “participated in an unlawful conspiracy … to deprive [Gill] of his right to liberty, to his right to speak freely without retribution, and to be free from unreasonable seizures, in violation of his rights under the first, fourth and 14th amendments to the constitution of the United States”.Filed by the prominent civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, the civil action seeks monetary damages “for false arrest, civil rights conspiracy resulting in false arrest and false imprisonment, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress”.The Guardian contacted a Giuliani attorney for comment.On 26 June 2022, Giuliani was campaigning with his son, Andrew Giuliani, a candidate for governor of New York – in what the suit calls a “vanity run” – when Gill, a grocery store employee, walked past and clapped the former mayor on the back, saying: “What’s up, scumbag?”Giuliani, then 78, accused Gill of hitting him – and said the feeling was like being shot or struck with a boulder.In the words of Gill’s lawsuit, “video footage captured the entire encounter. One person called 911 and [officers] arrived on the scene, followed by other NYPD officers.”Gill was arrested and spent 21 hours in jail before being arraigned on misdemeanor charges including third-degree assault.Police on the scene and Giuliani, the suit alleges, “agreed to deprive plaintiff of his liberty”. The suit charges that Gill was “put through the system” at Giuliani’s urging.“They did so despite the fact that the police defendants, and other members of the NYPD, all stated they should watch the video before taking any action,” the suit contends.Gill, the suit says, “explained that he ‘tapped’ … Giuliani to get his attention; a version of events completely corroborated by the video”.The suit also contends that Giuliani welcomed physical contact at the campaign event on Staten Island which, Kuby and co-counsel Rhiya Trivedi argue, is among the last outposts of dogged Trump support in New York City.“The area is a bastion of white conservatism and Trump support,” the suit says. “It is one of the vanishingly small venues in New York where the fabulist, election-denying, disbarred attorney and late-night-talk-show-punchline former mayor Rudolph Giuliani could expect to find a mostly affectionate audience.”At the grocery store, the suit says: “Giuliani mingled with the shoppers, who variously shook his hand, patted him on the back and shoulders, tapped him on the arm, and generally told him what a great guy he was.“Indeed, a woman is shown in the video affectionately patting and rubbing Giuliani’s back, demonstrating at least that minor physical contact was welcome at the event.“Not everyone present … was thrilled at Giuliani’s appearance … Gill worked at the ShopRite and had done so for many years, in contrast to Giuliani who has not held an actual job in over a decade.“[Gill] took a break from his work, walked up to … Giuliani, patted or tapped him on the back, said ‘What’s up, scumbag?’ and walked away.“That was the entire encounter between the two men.”After Gill’s arrest, amid widespread outcry, the Legal Aid Society, which provides public defenders, said: “The charges facing Daniel Gill, who has no previous contact with the criminal legal system, are inconsistent with existing law.“Our client merely patted Mr Giuliani, who sustained nothing remotely resembling physical injuries, without malice, to simply get his attention, as the video footage clearly showed.“Mr Gill was then followed and threatened by one of Mr Giuliani’s associates who allegedly poked Mr Gill in the chest and told him that he was going to be ‘locked up’. He was then needlessly held by [New York police] in custody for over 24 hours.“Given Mr Giuliani’s obsession with seeing his name in the press and his demonstrated propensity to distort the truth, we are happy to correct the record on exactly what occurred over the weekend on Staten Island.”The current New York mayor, Eric Adams, also questioned Giuliani’s account of the event.“Someone needs to remind former mayor Giuliani that falsely reporting a crime is a crime,” Adams told reporters. “When you look at the video, the guy basically walked by and patted him on the back. It was clear that [Giuliani] was not punched in the head. It was clear that it didn’t feel like a bullet. It was clear that he wasn’t about to fall to the ground.”The charges were dismissed. Shortly after that, Gill filed a civil claim against the city, alleging false arrest.His lawsuit against Giuliani comes at a time of growing legal woes for the former mayor.On Monday, a former associate filed suit against Giuliani, seeking $10m and alleging “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct” including “alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist and antisemitic remarks”.Noelle Dunphy alleges that Giuliani “often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump”.She also alleges Giuliani asked “if she knew anyone in need of a pardon”, as “he was selling pardons for $2m, which he and President Trump would split”.Dunphy also claims Giuliani directed her to refer pardon-seekers to him, eschewing the “normal channels” of the justice department.Giuliani also faces possible indictment over his leading role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. 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