President Donald Trump’s legal team has initiated legal action against the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, alleging defamation over a report published in July that found no evidence that National Guard deployments had reduced violent crime. In a letter dated Aug. 17, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, stated that the report contains materially false statements intended to damage the president’s reputation. Brito set a deadline of 5 p.m. Friday for the organization to retract the report, apologize, and compensate the president. Failure to comply could result in a lawsuit seeking at least $5 billion in damages.
The Center for American Progress responded in a letter, asserting that this threatened lawsuit is baseless. Kevin Metz, the organization’s attorney, stated, “This is utterly absurd: truth is not and cannot be defamation. … The right to disagree with the government, debate policies, and express dissent over policy choices is central to a functioning American democracy.”
Both letters were obtained by CBS News. CBS News has reached out to attorney Neera Tanden, President and CEO of CAP, for comment. Tanden stated, “This threatened lawsuit is an attack on facts and evidence; it’s a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.”
The Trump administration first deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June 2025 with a mission to protect federal immigration officials and other federal law enforcement amid heated protests over immigration raids. Two months later, Mr. Trump announced that 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 and concluded that the National Guard deployments “had no measurable effect on violent crime, homicides, or gun victimizations.”
The FBI reported last week that violent crime rates were down nationwide in 2025. If Mr. Trump pursues a lawsuit over CAP’s report, he’s ‘going to have a difficult hill to climb because of the legal standard that is used by public figures in defamation cases,’ said CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “It’s very unlikely that a dispute about statistics would give rise to a defamation claim,” Levinson explained. “It’s also very unlikely that a dispute about statistics would give rise to a defamation claim.” She added, “The official has to show that the defendant made the statement at issue with actual malice, which means they knew the statement was false, or they acted in reckless disregard of its falsity.”
Mr. Trump has a history of using lawsuits to target institutions and individuals he perceives as political opponents. In addition, she said, the president ‘would have to show that the statements of issue are reasonably understood as being about him, as opposed to statements… generally criticizing his administration.’ Mr. Trump has a history of using lawsuits to target institutions and individuals he perceives as political opponents. Tanden, in her statement, said, “In America, profound disagreements over public policy are resolved through robust public debate, not through threats or intimidation. 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.”
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Source: CBS News
