President Trump is threatening a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the Center for American Progress (CAP) after the left-leaning think tank published research concluding that his National Guard deployments had “no measurable effect on violent crime trends.” Trump’s personal attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent CAP a letter demanding the group withdraw the report, apologize, and pay compensation, giving it a Friday 5 p.m. deadline.
The report at the center of the dispute, published July 13, examined crime trends in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Memphis before and during the president’s National Guard deployments to those cities. CAP’s analysis found the deployments didn’t produce a measurable drop in violent crime, directly contradicting the administration’s public justification for sending troops into American cities.
How CAP Responded
CAP attorney Kevin H. Metz rejected the defamation claim outright in a same-day response, writing that “this is utterly absurd” and that “truth is not and cannot be defamation.” Defamation law in the US requires a false statement of fact, not simply a policy conclusion someone in power disagrees with, and legal experts note that publishing a data analysis with methodology attached is a difficult target for a defamation claim even before getting to the truth of the underlying findings.
Why This Case Is Being Watched Closely
Threatening litigation over a research report, rather than rebutting it with competing data, is a pattern that’s drawn attention beyond this one dispute: it raises the cost of publishing findings that contradict administration policy regardless of whether the lawsuit ultimately succeeds. Whether or not Trump actually files suit, the threat itself functions as a warning to other researchers and institutions about what publishing an unfavorable finding might cost them to defend.
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