In its report, the organization concluded that lowered rates of violent crime are part of a longer-term trend; National Guard deployments to select cities, in contrast, “had no measurable effect on violent crime trends.”
President Donald Trump has threatened to sue a progressive organization that released a report indicating that National Guard deployments haven’t led to any significant reduction in crime rates.
According to The Associated Press, attorneys for the president sent a letter to American Progress earlier this week, giving the non-profit until the end of the business day on Friday to issue a retraction or face a $5 billion lawsuit.
American Progress has since said that it declined the request.
Neera Tanden, the organization’s president and chief executive, has since described the potential lawsuit as “a transparent attempt to silence us.”
“We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it,” Tanden said of the president’s threat.
“This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless,” she added. “A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that is contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us.”
The Associated Press notes that American Progress released a report in July that criticized the Trump administration’s decision to attribute a historic drop in crime rates to the National Guard.
In its report, the organization concluded that lowered rates of violent crime are part of a longer-term trend; National Guard deployments to select cities, in contrast, “had no measurable effect on violent crime trends.”
Tanden said that Trump is threatening to sue simply because the non-profit findings are “inconvenient” for the administration.
“Based on analysis of crime data, our report demonstrated facts about the National Guard deployments that are inconvenient to the Trump administration,” she said.
Nevertheless, the president’s legal team has insisted that American Progress “immediately retract the false, malicious and defamatory statements made about President Trump.”
Alejandro Brito, a lawyer representing the president, highlighted several examples from the report that criticized Trump’s leadership. One of the cited examples said, “In an effort to falsely claim his policies have reduced crime, the president is exploiting the fact that violent crime and murder were already declining in the cities his administration targeted with these extreme measures.” These types of examples, Brito said, are intended to make readers believe that “the President of the United States knowingly deceived the American people, manipulated crime statistics for political advantage, exploited public fear, abused military and executive authority for an ulterior purpose, staged a shame law enforcement operation, and then lied about its success.”
Brito said that the failure to retract the report will leave Trump with little choice but to seek compensation for “the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that Defendants have caused him to suffer.”
In response to the president’s claims, Kevin Metz, an attorney for American Progress, called the proposed lawsuit “utterly absurd,” adding that ‘truth is not and cannot be defamation. The legal standards here are clear, well-established, and speech-protective.”
Sources
Trump threatens $5bn lawsuit over liberal national guard policy report
Trump threatens lawsuit against nonprofit that questioned whether National Guard plan lessened crime
Trump Threatens Suit Over Report He Doesn’t Like, Aiming to Intimidate a Critic
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