Trump threatens defamation lawsuit against liberal think tank over National Guard deployment report

President Donald Trump's personal attorney called for a liberal think-tank to retract a report that's critical of his National Guard deployments by Friday evening or face a $5 billion defamation lawsuit.

Attorney Alejandro Brito sent the letter to the Center for American Progress this week after the think-tank released a report last month that claimed the deployments were not improving violent crime rates.

The think-tank has argued that crime rates were already falling before the Trump administration sent the troops to major cities like Los Angeles and Memphis.

“Defendants did not merely draw a different academic conclusion; they defamed President Trump by distorting a contested empirical question into a sensational, false, malicious and defamatory accusation that President Trump knowingly lied to the American people,” Brito wrote in the letter, according to The Hill. 

The center's president and CEO Neera Tanden, a senior adviser to former President Biden, said the threat was “baseless” and defended the report as “rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis.”

“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," Tanden said. "A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.

“In America, profound disagreements over public policy are resolved through robust public debate, not through threats or intimidation,” she continued. “Independent data, evidence, and analysis are essential to that debate. Efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American.”

Kevin Metz, CAP’s general counsel, indicated Friday that the center would not retract the report, warning Brito that if Trump follows through, the group would welcome full discovery detailing the costs of the deployments and “full picture” of White House involvement.

The general counsel also warned that the lawsuit would make it easier for Democrats to use the same tactic on Republicans in future administrations.

“Such a precedent would not stay confined to CAP, and the next administration could just as easily target the Heritage Foundation or America First Policy Institute for facts they report that the president finds inconvenient,” Metz wrote. “That would be wrong and indeed unAmerican, just as this threat of litigation is.”

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.