Trump Threatens $5 Billion Suit Over Crime Report

Brito wrote that CAP "manufactured" the finding that the deployments were not improving crime. "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," he wrote.

The letter warns that "failure to comply will leave President Trump with no choice but to pursue any and all legal rights and remedies available to recover damages for the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that Defendants have caused him to suffer."

Tanden, a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden, said CAP's work "is grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis." She added: "Based on analysis of crime data, our report demonstrated facts about the National Guard deployments that are inconvenient to the Trump administration."

"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," she said. "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it."

The New York Times, which first reported the letter, described the threat as the latest example of Trump using the legal system against people who voice unflattering facts and opinions generally protected by the First Amendment. MSNBC called it an extension of an intimidation campaign. Newsmax reported the threat straight, as a warning to a liberal think tank over a report on his deployments.