Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump are seeking the recusal of a judge presiding over the defamation case brought by the men formerly known as the Central Park Five because of the judge’s personal relationship with the lead attorney representing them.
Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise—now known as The Exonerated Five—sued Trump in federal court in Pennsylvania last month, accusing him of making “false and defamatory statements” about them during a presidential debate in September.
The men, who are Black and Latino, were teenagers when they were wrongfully convicted in the 1989 rape and beating of a white woman jogger in New York City’s Central Park.
All five spent years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence and the confession of a convicted rapist and murderer to the crime. Trump famously took out full-page ads in the city’s newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty for those responsible and has continued to claim the five were behind the attack, even after their exoneration.
Trump’s attorney Karin Sweigart filed a motion in the lawsuit on Thursday, seeking the “immediate recusal” of Judge Michael M. Baylson because of his personal relationship with Shanin Specter, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
The filing, which Newsweek reviewed, said Trump’s attorneys had been notified by attorneys for the plaintiffs about “a significant personal connection” between Specter and the judge.
“We don’t oppose the motion to recuse,” Specter said in an email to Newsweek on Friday.
Newsweek has contacted Baylson and Sweigart for comment via email.
The filing cited a letter, dated November 13, that Specter sent Trump’s attorneys detailing his relationship with Baylson after the judge was assigned to preside over the case.
“I am writing to disclose that I and my firm have personally represented both Judge Baylson and his wife,” Specter wrote in the letter. “I have also known and enjoyed a friendship with Judge Baylson since I was a child. Both he and his wife have been guests in my home on various occasions, and I and my wife have been guests in their home on various occasions as well.”
Sweigart wrote that “given the longstanding personal and professional connection between the Honorable Michael M. Baylson and Shanin Specter and their respective family members, Defendant respectfully submits that a reasonable person would question the Court’s impartiality in this matter, and therefore seeks recusal.”
It is not the first time that attorneys have sought to throw someone off a case involving Trump over a personal relationship. The Republican and other defendants charged over efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia are appealing a judge’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case. They argue that a personal relationship she had with a special prosecutor she hired to lead the case—who had since withdrawn from it—created a conflict of interest.
Last month’s lawsuit was filed by Salaam, now a New York City council member, and the other four men, after Trump misstated important facts about their case during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on September 10.
“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.
The president-elect appeared to be confusing guilty pleas with confessions, as the five never pled guilty to the crime, and the victim in the case is still alive.
“Defendant Trump has previously made numerous public statements demonstrating that he is familiar with the Central Park assaults, the criminal case, the trials, the exoneration and the settlement with the City, and that he therefore knew that the statements he made on September 10, 2024, were false and misleading,” attorneys for the men wrote in the lawsuit.
“Like his statements at the September 10 debate, many of Defendant Trump’s past statements are themselves false, defamatory and part of a continuing pattern of extreme and outrageous conduct directed at Plaintiffs.”
The men’s attorneys are seeking a jury trial to determine compensatory and punitive damages.
The men said they had confessed to the crime under duress and later recanted, but were convicted in jury trials after pleading not guilty. Their convictions were vacated in 2002, and they later received a $40 million settlement from New York City.
The five campaigned for Harris ahead of November’s election, with some calling out Trump for never apologizing for the newspaper ads in remarks at the Democratic National Convention in August.
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