President Donald Trump’s legal team has issued a five-page letter demanding that the Center for American Progress (CAP) retract a report analyzing the impact of National Guard deployments on violent crime rates. The letter, sent by Trump’s attorney Alejandro Brito on August 17, sets a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for the think tank to comply or face a $5 billion defamation lawsuit.
The report, published in July, concluded that there was no evidence that National Guard deployments in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and New Orleans had reduced violent crime. The deployments began in June 2025, initially to protect federal immigration officials amid protests, before expanding to other cities under the stated goal of combating crime.
Trump’s legal team alleges the report contains materially false statements intended to damage the president. In the letter, Brito argued that the think tank “manufactured” the findings to falsely claim the deployments were ineffective. The letter states that the report “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.”
The Center for American Progress (CAP) has rejected the demands, calling the threat “baseless.” In a statement, CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden defended the report as “rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis.” She emphasized that First Amendment protections allow for the publication of facts and analysis contrary to government claims.
“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.”
The report analyzed citywide crime data in the four cities where National Guard troops were deployed and found no measurable impact on violent crime rates. The deployments cost approximately $1.7 billion, according to the analysis.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose office oversees Washington, D.C., has publicly supported Trump’s stance. In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter), Pirro claimed the results of the deployments were “undeniable,” despite criticism from media outlets and policy analysts. She cited reports of declining violent crime and property crime rates in the capital, though independent analyses have questioned the direct correlation between the deployments and crime reduction.
The standoff highlights ongoing tensions between the Trump administration and progressive organizations, with Trump’s legal team previously filing high-profile defamation lawsuits against perceived critics, often demanding multi-billion-dollar settlements. The latest threat targets CAP and other officials from past Democratic administrations, signaling an escalation in the administration’s legal strategy against critics.