By David Thomas and Mike Scarcella

May 29 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has beefed up his defense team in a defamation lawsuit related to the overturned Central Park Five convictions, adding a senior lawyer from prominent law firm DLA Piper.

Caryn Schechtman, who leads DLA Piper's securities and financial investigations practice, signed a brief Trump filed Thursday in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to overturn a decision that allowed the case to move forward.

The 2024 lawsuit was brought by members of the so-called Central Park Five – Black and Hispanic teenagers whose convictions were overturned stemming from the 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park. They allege Trump, a Republican, falsely said during a September 2024 presidential debate with Democrat Kamala Harris that the men had killed someone and pleaded guilty.

Trump's appeal in the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit argues that the judge who said Trump must face the lawsuit last year did not correctly apply a Pennsylvania law that targets litigation used to stifle debate.

"If the erroneous order stands, which it should not, Pennsylvania’s anti-SLAPP statute will protect speakers sued in Pennsylvania court but not speakers sued on the same Pennsylvania-law claims in federal court," Trump's lawyers argued in Thursday's brief.

Schechtman and a spokesperson for DLA Piper did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shanin Specter, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement called Trump's filing "a rehash of his unsuccessful arguments" in the lower court.

DLA Piper was among 18 law firms that urged then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to remove Trump from office after his supporters attacked the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021, in an effort to disrupt Congress's certification of Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Some major law firms distanced themselves from Trump-related work after the 2020 election, though the president, his family and his businesses have retained ties to a handful of larger firms.

Schechtman also defended First Lady Melania Trump in a lawsuit filed by journalist Michael Wolff. A federal judge on Friday dismissed Wolff's lawsuit.

Schechtman and DLA Piper represented Trump's social media company, the Trump Media & Technology Group DJT.O, in a $6 billion merger with Google-based fusion power firm TAE Technologies in December. Trump Media owns the social media platform Truth Social.

Other lawyers representing Trump in the Central Park Five case – Josh Halpern of JH Legal and Karin Sweigart and Jesse Franklin-Murdock of Sweigart Murdock – did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment.

Trump's lawyers in his appellate brief said Harris "falsely accused President Trump of using 'race to divide the American people'" and said the defamation lawsuit was "meritless" and "ridiculous."

The plaintiffs – Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown and Korey Wise – were cleared of the Central Park rape in 2002 based on new DNA evidence and another person's confession.

Read more:

Trump must face defamation lawsuit from Central Park Five defendants

Central Park Five sue Trump for defamation over debate remarks