Timothy Busfield did not enter a plea Wednesday in New Mexico to charges of child sex abuse.
Looking at years in prison if found guilty, the orange jumpsuit-clad Busfield will remain in custody and be back in court in less than a week to fight a pre-trial motion by prosecutors to keep him incarcerated up to and during a trial.
Facing two counts of criminal sexual contact with a minor and child abuse over claims of incidents with two boys who were actors on The Cleaning Lady, Busfield surrendered himself to Albuquerque authorities Tuesday, five days after an arrest warrant was issued for him and U.S. Marshals were activated. In custody at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center after being arrested and booked, the 68-year-old Emmy winner appeared in Judge Felicia Blea-Rivera’s courtroom remotely.
All Busfield said in the less than five minutes he was before the judge was “Thank you, your honor” at the end before shuffling away to court officers.
Represented via video by attorney Amber Fayerberg, Busfield did not raise a probable cause challenge against the state on the felony charges. The hearing comes less than 24 hours after Busfield declared his innocence Tuesday, saying, “I did not do anything to those little boys.”
As detailed in a January 9 arrest warrant, Busfield told Albuquerque Police Officer Marvin Brown in a November 3, 2025 phone interview that Cleaning Lady “lead actress, Elodie Yung” told him in late 2024 that “the mother of SL and VL (sic) that she wanted revenge, and I’m going to get my revenge on Tim Busfield for not bringing her kids back for the final season.”
After months of investigation by the APD into the claims of misconduct, which had primarily been about tickling and head-kissing, there also was a probe by Cleaning Lady producers Warner Bros.
Today, the outside lead investigator in that WB probe spoke out.
“I conducted an independent and thorough investigation of all allegations known to the Studio at the time,” Christina McGovern of Solomon Law’s Los Angeles office said. “Warner Bros. gave me full discretion as to my investigation. Based on what was alleged, and all evidence gathered, including multiple witness statements, I found no corroborating evidence that Mr. Busfield engaged in inappropriate conduct or that he was ever alone with the twins on set.”
Even with that, the accusations against Busfield took a much darker turn last fall. After police had decided the allegations did not meet their standard for further investigation and the WB probe was concluded, the mother of the children contacted the cops again. She told the APD investigating officer “on 09/02/2025, SL reported to his counselor that Timothy Busfield “touched his penis and bottom.”
Additionally Wednesday, as promised the previous day, Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bergman’s office filed a motion to have The Cleaning Lady director remain behind bars because “no conditions of release will reasonably protect the safety of any other person or the community.” That detainment motion will have its own hearing in the coming days. To get their way, prosecutors will have to convince a district court judge that there is “clear and convincing evidence” that pretrial detention is required for public safety.
Busfield’s Larry Stein-led legal team will file an opposition to the detention motion before next week’s hearing.
Earlier today, after a new decades-old allegation of sexual abuse against Busfield emerged, The West Wing alum’s lawyer Stein sent out a missive of a successful lie detector test by his client. “Tim Busfield denies the allegations in the criminal complaint and maintains they are completely false,” the attorney said. “As a voluntary step, he submitted to an independent polygraph examination regarding those allegations and passed.”
Besides taking place over the past few days, as I hear, there is no additional info as to when and where the polygraph test was conducted, nor who administered it.
However, it is worth noting that while polygraph tests are often inadmissible in court in most states, New Mexico does permit them if a judge allows it. On the other side of the country, Deadline has confirmed that U.S. Marshals on Tuesday raided the Upstate New York home belonging to Busfield and wife Melissa Gilber after the accused actor had already put himself in police custody. There are no details what the feds may or may not have retrieved from the property or what they were looking for.
In the New Mexico case, two brothers born in 2014 who worked on Fox’s now-canceled The Cleaning Lady, on which Busfield directed a number of episodes and served as an EP between 2022 and 2024, are claiming the thirtysomething actor repeatedly touched them inappropriately and sexually. One of the boys, referred to as SL, graphically told APD Officer Brown, who wrote up the dense warrant after months of investigation starting in late 2024, that Busfield touched his “penis and buttocks, masking it as play” on more than one occasion. To be clear, what SL said directly was that Busfield put his hands on the boy’s “‘poop’ and ‘pee’ area.”
As well as claims from the two boys, who starred on the Albuquerque-filmed and now-canceled Fox drama over multiple seasons before being let go for having aged out of the role, Busfield has been accused in two previous sexual assault allegations in 1994 and 2012. A journeyman on the big and small screen since appearing in 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds, the actor was never charged in those cases which involved a 17-year-old girl and a 28-year-old woman, respectively. In the case of the teenager, Busfield did make a payout of $150,000 over legal fees in his unsuccessful defamation countersuit.
Today’s hearing saw Busfield’s case come up before the judge after dozens of other criminal cases, some in person, some remotely, in a full docket.
