Trump Threatens $5 Billion Suit Against Think Tank Over Crime Report

President Donald Trump has threatened a $5 billion lawsuit against the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, unless it retracts a report questioning the effectiveness of his National Guard deployments in reducing urban crime.

The legal notice, sent Monday by Trump attorney Alejandro Brito, gave the organization until the end of business Friday to withdraw the publication or face litigation. The center has declined to comply.

The dispute centers on a July 13 report that argued the administration was taking credit for declining violent crime rates that were already falling before the deployments. The analysis concluded that sending National Guard troops to various cities "had no measurable effect on violent crime trends."

Neera Tanden, CAP's president and CEO, dismissed the threat as "a transparent attempt to silence us," adding that the organization "will neither cower nor bend in the face of it." She said the findings were simply "inconvenient to the Trump administration."

In his letter, Brito called the report's statements "false, malicious, and defamatory" and demanded immediate retraction. He specifically cited language accusing the president of "exploiting" declining crime rates to "falsely claim his policies have reduced crime."

The legal threat is part of a broader pattern for Trump, who has previously pressured law firms and other institutions through similar tactics. Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment expert at the Freedom Forum, characterized such actions as attempts "to push someone into submission rather than actually on the merits."

CAP's general counsel, Kevin Metz, responded in writing that the defamation claim "is utterly absurd: truth is not and cannot be defamation." Attempts to reach Brito for further comment were unsuccessful.