Liberal think tank refuses to take down report after Trump threatens $5 billion defamation lawsuit

Lawyers for President Donald Trump are threatening to file a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against a liberal think tank if it doesn’t retract a report claiming that the White House’s deployment of National Guard troops has failed to lower crime rates in D.C. The group is refusing to comply. The Center for American Progress published a report in July that found the troop deployments failed to reduce urban crime in the way Trump had claimed, the New York Times reported. 
Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, sent a cease and desist letter to the center on Monday, warning that Trump would file the suit if the group didn’t fully retract the report. Briot claims the report was full of malicious and false statements, and he gave the center until 5 p.m. on Friday to retract the report and issue an apology to Trump. 
Neera Tanden, CAP president and CEO, said in a statement that the lawsuit is an “attack on facts” and its “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. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it,” Tanden said. 

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