Trump Threatens $5 Billion Suit Over National Guard Report

President Donald Trump is threatening to sue the Center for American Progress for $5 billion over a report that found his National Guard deployments did not reduce crime. The think tank has refused to retract the study.

I read the letter from Trump’s lawyer and felt my shoulders tighten. Not because the threat is new. It is not. But because the pattern is getting clearer. When a report does not match the story a president wants to tell, the answer is not more data. It is a lawsuit.

The Center for American Progress published its analysis on July 13. The report looked at crime data from Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Memphis. It tracked homicide, violent crime, and gun victimizations from January 2023 through February 2026. The conclusion was direct. There was no evidence that the National Guard deployments changed crime trends in those cities.

The report also noted that violent crime had been falling across the country before Trump returned to the White House. It said the administration was trying to take credit for a decline that was already underway. If the deployments continue through the end of 2026, the analysis estimated they could cost taxpayers more than $1.7 billion.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Alejandro Brito, sent a letter to the think tank on August 18. It gave the Center for American Progress until 5 p.m. on Friday to retract the report and apologize to the president. Failure to comply, the letter said, could result in a defamation lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages.

The center did not retract the report. Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, called the threats a transparent attempt to silence independent research. She said the group would stand behind its findings.

Trump has responded publicly. He called the report a political attack. “The report is a Radical Left SCAM,” President Donald Trump said.

I have watched this kind of exchange before. A report comes out. It does not say what a powerful person wants it to say. The response is not to argue with the numbers. It is to attack the messenger. The effect is not to win a debate. It is to make the next person think twice before publishing.

The National Guard deployments began in August 2025. Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., and sent nearly 2,000 federal troops to the capital. He said people would feel safer within 48 hours. The numbers did not show a major shift. An influx of troops led to fewer than 400 arrests in the first 10 days, mostly for nonviolent crimes.

This matters because people are paying for it. The $1.7 billion estimate is not a small number. It is money that could go to schools, to roads, to things that touch daily life. When a president spends that much, people should be able to ask if it worked. They should be able to see the data.

I worry about what happens when the answer is no. Not because the president is wrong. He might be right on other things. But because the response to being questioned should not be a threat. It should be a conversation.

The Center for American Progress is a liberal think tank. That does not make its numbers wrong. It makes them worth checking. Other analysts have looked at the same data. They have found similar results. Crime was falling before the deployments. It kept falling after. The deployments did not change the trend.

Trump is 80 years old. He has been in public life for a long time. He knows how to use a microphone. He knows how to turn a report into a fight. But a fight is not an answer. It is a distraction.

I keep thinking about the people in Washington, in Los Angeles, in Memphis. They are the ones who live with the results of these policies. They are the ones who pay the bills. They do not need a president who sues when he does not like a report. They need a president who listens when the numbers do not match the story.

The lawsuit threat is not just about one think tank. It is about what happens next. If a president can silence a report with a letter, what stops him from doing it again. What stops the next report from never being written.

I do not know if Trump will file the suit. His lawyer gave a deadline. The center did not meet it. That means the threat is still on the table. It means the fight is not over.

What I do know is this. A report is not a scam because it does not say what you want. It is a scam if the numbers are wrong. The Center for American Progress says its numbers are right. Trump says they are not. The answer is not a lawsuit. It is more data.

I want to live in a country where that is enough.