A federal judge on Friday recused himself from a defamation lawsuit filed by the exonerated “Central Park Five” against President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s lawyers argued that U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson’s personal relationship with the plaintiff’s lead attorney, Shanin Specter, raised concerns about his impartiality.
“Defendant respectfully submits that a reasonable person would question the Court’s impartiality in this matter, and therefore seeks recusal,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in a motion requesting Baylson’s recusal.
Shanin earlier this week said he was friends with the judge since childhood and represented him and his wife in legal matters.
The “Central Park Five” group filed the lawsuit in late October after Trump “defamed them in front of 67 million people, which has caused them to seek to clear their names all over again,” Shanin told The Associated Press.
They said Trump made “false and defamatory statements” about them during September’s presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. The group is asking for a jury trial to determine compensatory and punitive damages.
Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise were teenagers when they were accused of the 1989 rape and beating of a white woman jogging in New York City’s Central Park. The five, who are Black and Latino, said they confessed to the crimes under duress. They later recanted, pleading not guilty in court, and were later convicted after jury trials. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime.