President Donald Trump is threatening to sue a liberal think tank after it published a report last month casting doubt on the purported effectiveness of his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Alejandro Brito, one of the president's personal lawyers, sent a letter to the Center for American Progress (CAP) this week demanding that it retract a study it published on July 13, which concluded that there was no evidence the National Guard's presence in the nation's capital did anything to reduce violent crime.
Brito threatened to file a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against CAP if it did not retract the report and offer a personal apology to the president, according to the Times.
CAP president Neera Tanden said the organization was standing by its work and would not back down in the fact of legal threats from the president.
"This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless," said Tanden. "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."
Tanden added that "efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American."
CAP's report notes that crime has been declining in major US cities across the country over the last two years, and it finds that declines in Washington, DC over that period were not significantly greater than in cities where there was no National Guard presence.
"Despite multiple tests using multiple data sources, measures, and windows of time," the report concludes, "there is no compelling evidence that these deployments reduced homicides, violent crime, or gun violence."
The report adds that the goal of the deployment was never about fighting crime but rather "a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration."
CAP isn't alone in questioning the effectiveness of Trump's DC National Guard deployment.
Reuters on Wednesday published an investigation finding that National Guard soldiers have been mentioned in just 1.3% of cases brought before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which processes nearly all prosecutions in the city.
What's more, the investigation found that National Guard soldiers were mostly deployed to wealthier neighborhoods in the city, where they responded to minor incidents.
After examining court records, Reuters investigators "could find no reference... to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years."
Deploying the National Guard in DC is also an expensive endeavor. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) earlier this month revealed that keeping soldiers deployed in the city is projected to cost taxpayers an extra $1.4 billion through the end of Trump’s term.
