Trump Threatens $5 Billion Defamation Suit Over Report Saying National Guard Didn’t Reduce Crime
Jacquelyn Martin/AP photo
President Donald Trump is threatening a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the Center for American Progress after the liberal think tank published research challenging his claims about the impact of National Guard deployments on violent crime.
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, Trump’s personal attorney Alejandro Brito notified the organization in a Monday letter that the president would take legal action unless the organization withdrew the report, apologized, and provided Trump with financial compensation. The deadline for meeting those demands was set for 5 p.m. Friday, with the message ending, “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY.”
At issue is a July 13 CAP analysis examining crime trends in Washington, Los Angeles and Memphis before and during the president’s National Guard deployments. Researchers looked at homicide, violent crime and gun victimization data dating back to January 2023 and said they found “no evidence” connecting the deployments to subsequent reductions in crime.
The authors instead argued that Trump was claiming credit for a broader decline that was already underway before he returned to office. They also projected that keeping the Guard deployments in place through 2026 would bring their total taxpayer cost above $1.7 billion.
The report went further in criticizing the administration’s motives, declaring that the “primary goal” was “never to stop crime” and describing the deployments as “a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration.”
CAP president Neera Tanden, who once served as a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden, rejected Trump’s demands in a Friday statement, saying the organization would “neither cower nor bend in the face” of the threatened suit. She maintained that the report was “grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis.”
Trump had publicly targeted the report before Brito’s letter arrived, as the Times noted, calling it “another Radical Left SCAM” on Truth Social last week and threatening CAP and several of its financial supporters, including George Soros.
CAP attorney Kevin H. Metz responded to the Trump attorney’s demands Friday by rejecting the defamation allegations outright.
“This is utterly absurd,” Metz wrote. “Truth is not and cannot be defamation.” Metz also said CAP was prepared to fight the matter in court, where the discovery process could give the organization access to additional information about the Guard deployments.
The president has been no stranger to rosy declarations about crime as of late. Just last week, the president repeatedly boasted that “young beautiful girls” have been showing up at the White House to thank him for his work on the issue.
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