Trump Legal Team Seeks Judge’s Recusal in ‘Central Park Five’ Defamation Case

Korey Wise (C) speaks on stage as Kevin Richardson (L), New York City council member Dr. Yusef Salaam (2nd L), Rev. Al Sharpton (2nd-R), and Raymond Santana (R) look on during the last day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 22, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

President-elect Donald Trump’s attorneys in a Nov. 14 filing asked a federal judge to recuse himself from an ongoing defamation case brought by the now-exonerated “Central Park Five,” citing the judge’s “significant personal connection” with the men’s lead attorney.

In the filing, Trump’s legal team sought the “immediate recusal” of Senior Judge Michael Baylson of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The motion highlighted a disclosure made on Nov. 13 by Shanin Specter, the lead attorney representing the men, revealing his longstanding relationship with Baylson.

“Specifically, Mr. Specter stated that he has personally represented both the Honorable Michael M. Baylson and his wife,” the motion states. “Mr. Specter also stated that he has known and enjoyed a friendship with Judge Baylson since he was a child, and that both the Judge and his wife have been guests in Mr. Specter’s home on various occasions.”

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

The defamation lawsuit, filed on Oct. 21, stems from comments that Trump made during his Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 general election.

“[R]ecusal 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.

Specter told The Epoch Times on Nov. 15, “We do not oppose the motion.”

During the presidential debate, Trump defended his stance on the case involving the “Central Park Five,” a group of black and Hispanic then-teenagers arrested and convicted of raping and beating a white woman as she jogged in Central Park on April 19, 1989. The woman, then-28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili, was left for dead in a bush, and the five were also accused of attacking two other men that same night.

In the aftermath of the attacks that shocked the city, Trump placed full-page ads in major New York newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty in the state.

“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 they pled guilty, then they pled not guilty,” Trump said during the debate.

The five men—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 sued Trump in Pennsylvania, accusing him of making “false and defamatory statements.”

“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 read.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, described the legal action in a statement to news outlets as “just another frivolous election interference lawsuit filed by desperate left-wing activists in an attempt to distract the American people.”

Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist, in 2002 confessed to police that he was the one who had assaulted Meili when he was 17 and that he was acting alone. A New York Police Department report later concluded that while DNA and other evidence supported Reyes’s story, there was “nothing but his uncorroborated word that he did so alone.”

In 2014, New York City paid the five men $41 million, a settlement that Mayor Bill de Blasio said would hopefully allow “the whole city to turn the page and move forward.”

Trisha Meili, following her recovery, became an advocate for victims of sexual assault.

Zachary Stieber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.