Trump's Lawyer Gives a Think Tank Until 5 p.m. to Retract Its National Guard Crime Report or Face a $5 Billion Suit

President Trump's personal attorney Alejandro Brito sent the Center for American Progress a nine-page letter, reviewed by The Hill, demanding the think tank retract a report on Trump's National Guard deployments, apologize and compensate him by 5 p.m. on Aug. 21 or face a defamation suit seeking at least $5 billion. The report, published last month, said there was "no evidence" the deployments reduced violent crime. Brito wrote that CAP "did not merely draw a different academic conclusion" but "distort[ed] a contested empirical question into a sensational, false, malicious and defamatory accusation."

The demand extends to a research organization a litigation strategy the President has previously aimed at news outlets, several of which settled. Because the disputed claim is an empirical finding about the effect of a federal deployment, the threat tests whether policy research adverse to the government can be treated as actionable falsity.

CAP declined to retract. President and CEO Neera Tanden called the threat "baseless" and said the group "will neither cower nor bend." General counsel Kevin H. Metz called any suit "absurd," said CAP would welcome discovery into the deployments' costs, and warned the precedent could later be used against groups such as the Heritage Foundation.