Trump Threatens Lawsuit Against Nonprofit Questioning National Guard Crime Plan

President Trump's legal team is threatening to sue the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) for defamation over a July report.

The report found no evidence that National Guard deployments have reduced violent crime. In an August 17 letter, Trump's lawyer, Alejandro Brito, claimed the report contains materially false statements intended to damage the president. Brito set a deadline of 5 p.m. Friday for CAP to retract the report, apologize, and compensate the president, warning of a lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages.

Kevin Metz, an attorney for CAP, responded in a letter, stating, "This is utterly absurd: truth is not and cannot be defamation." CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden said the threatened lawsuit's attack on facts and evidence is baseless, calling it a transparent attempt to silence us. Tanden affirmed CAP will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.

Both letters were obtained by CBS News. The Trump administration first deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June 2025 to protect federal immigration officials and other federal law enforcement amid protests over immigration raids. Two months later, Trump announced Guard troops would also deploy to Washington, D.C., to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.

Deployments to Memphis and New Orleans followed. The report that drew the president's ire relied on multiple analyses of citywide crime data in those communities. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro defended Trump's troop surge in a video posted to X, claiming the results have been undeniable and showing news clips noting plunging rates of violent crime and property crimes.

Pirro criticized a USA Today op-ed titled "Trump wastes billions deploying National Guard troops to DC," which is central to Trump's defamation claims. Roughly one year ago, Trump began deploying thousands of National Guard troops to D.C. to curb violent crime and support immigration enforcement. The effort has cost approximately $1.65 million a day, while D.C.'s local police budget totals about $1.5 million daily. The FBI reported last week that violent crime rates were down nationwide in 2025.