President Trump has threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against a left-wing think tank that issued a report claiming that the White House’s deployment of the National Guard has not decreased crime.
In a letter obtained by The Hill and written by attorney Alejandro Brito and sent to the Center for American Progress (CAP), Brito argued, “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.”
CBS News reports that an attorney for CAP, Kevin Metz, responded to Brito in a separate letter, writing, “This is utterly absurd: truth is not and cannot be defamation.” Metz argued, “The right to disagree with the government, debate policies, and express dissent over policy choices is central to a functioning American democracy.”
CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden defended the organization’s report. She said that the report “demonstrated facts about the National Guard deployments that are inconvenient to the Trump administration.”
“This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless. 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 stated. “A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.”
Newly-released FBI data reveals that violent crime across the nation fell 9.3% in 2025. “Collectively, law enforcement across the country—state, local, Tribal, and federal—has delivered for the American people the largest reduction in violent crime in U.S. history,” FBI Director Kash Patel said. “Violent crime, and you’re talking rape, robbery, assault, all down double-digits across America.”
