Donald Trump's personal lawyer Alejandro Brito sent a letter to the liberal research organization Center for American Progress (Cap) threatening a $5bn lawsuit unless it retracts a report criticizing the effectiveness of the president's National Guard rollout. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
The report, released on 13 July, argues that National Guard deployments in Washington DC, Memphis and Los Angeles failed to have a measurable impact on crime in these cities despite an estimated cost of $1.7bn.
Key findings of the report
Cap researchers compared falling crime rates in cities without National Guard intervention and concluded they are not statistically different from those with intervention. They also noted that violent crime began falling well before Trump took office in 2025.
Trump's lawyer's demand
According to the New York Times, Brito sent Cap a letter threatening a lawsuit if the center did not retract the research report. The threat is from Trump in his personal capacity, not on behalf of the federal government.
Cap's response
The center released a statement on Friday standing by its report and castigating the threat as an attack on the public's right to speak truth to power. Cap's president and CEO Neera Tanden said: "Based on analysis of crime data, our report demonstrated facts about the National Guard deployments that are inconvenient to the Trump administration. This threatened lawsuit's attack on facts and evidence is baseless. A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that are contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it."
Brito's arguments
In his letter demanding retraction, Brito argues that the statements are intended to create the impression that the President of the United States "knowingly deceived the American people, manipulated crime statistics for political advantage, exploited public fear, abused military and executive authority for an ulterior purpose, staged a sham law enforcement operation, and then lied about its success."
Cap's counter-arguments
Cap's response to Trump's legal complaint describes the claim of defamation as "absurd" and states that its conclusions are statements of fact about their meticulous research. The center wrote: "On their face, concern crime statistics and causality, or actions of the federal government, not President Trump himself. In addition to being true, these statements cannot defame President Trump because they are not about him."
About Cap
Cap is a leading liberal thinktank founded in 2003 by John Podesta, former Clinton White House chief of staff, who later served as chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.