Judge Grants Trump’s Recusal Bid in Central Park Five Defamation Suit

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson issued an order on Nov. 15 granting President-elect Donald Trump’s request for the judge’s recusal from a defamation case filed by the exonerated “Central Park Five” against him.

This followed a motion filed by Trump’s lawyers on Nov. 14 seeking Baylson’s recusal over concerns that his personal ties to the plaintiffs’ lead attorney could undermine the impartiality of the proceedings.

Baylson, a senior judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said he would recuse himself from the case and asked the chief judge to reassign it to another judge. The plaintiffs did not oppose the motion to recuse.

Shanin Specter, the lead attorney representing the five plaintiffs, revealed on Nov. 13 that he had been friends with Baylson since childhood and had previously represented Baylson and his wife. Specter also said that Baylson and his wife have been guests in his home on various occasions.

Trump’s lawyers said the relationship “rises above the normal friendship between a lawyer and a judge” and argued that the public would reasonably “harbor doubts” about the impartiality of the proceedings if Baylson were to continue presiding over the case.

“Recusal is necessary and proper—particularly in a high-profile case involving a Presidential Debate and a President-Elect defendant, where the public’s confidence in the judiciary is all the more critical,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing.

The defamation suit was filed on Oct. 21 by five black and Hispanic men who as teenagers were arrested and convicted of raping and beating a woman named Trisha Meili as she jogged in Central Park on April 19, 1989.

Yusef Salaam, Antron Brown (formerly McCray), Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise had their convictions vacated in 2002 after DNA evidence exonerated them, but only after serving between six and 13 years in prison.

They filed the lawsuit against Trump following his comments about them during the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 general election.

The lawsuit stated that Trump had falsely claimed during the debate that the plaintiffs had “killed an individual” and pleaded guilty to the crime.

“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,” the complaint reads.

The plaintiffs were exonerated after Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist, confessed to police in 2002 that he acted alone in attacking Meili in Central Park. New York City later paid the five men $41 million in a settlement for their false arrest.

Bill Pan contributed to this report.