President Trump and his legal team have asked the Justice Department to pay him about $230 million to settle two federal damage claims over investigations into him during both his first administration and the Biden administration, according to a source familiar with the claims. This raises the possibility of a conflict of interest, since some of the top Justice Department officials tasked with settling the claims defended Mr. Trump in those cases.
Both claims were filed before Mr. Trump was inaugurated for his second term.
It’s unclear whether discussions between the Trump legal team and the Justice Department are underway or whether they have occurred, but the paperwork on both claims relating to past investigations into him has been filed, the source said.
The first claim is related to the FBI and special counsel investigation into Mr. Trump regarding alleged interference by Russia in the 2016 presidential election, and the second claim concerns the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago that centered around Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021. The claims were first reported by The New York Times on Tuesday.
According to the Justice Department manual, any settlement of the claims would have to be approved by the deputy attorney general or the associate attorney general. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, was one of Mr. Trump’s criminal defense attorneys. Stanley Woodward, associate attorney general, was Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta’s defense attorney in the classified documents case. If any compensation is approved, it would be paid for by American taxpayers.
“There is such a thing as restitution in criminal cases, but that’s for the victims of the crimes, not for those under investigation for committing one. Maybe this has happened in the past, but it’s very rare,” longtime D.C. attorney Paul Dueffert said in an interview. “I’d love to see the backup on these numbers.”
“It’s hard to imagine how with these two cases you could get to $230 million in legal fees,” Dueffert added. “I could see tens of millions, but not hundreds of millions.”
The claims were first referenced by Mr. Trump last week during an Oval Office event with FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi and Blanche.
“I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president I said, ‘I’m sort of suing myself.’ I don’t know, how do you settle the lawsuit, I’ll say give me X dollars, and I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit,” Trump said in reference to the claims, although administrative claims are not lawsuits. “It sort of looks bad, I’m suing myself, right?”
When asked by reporters at a White House event Tuesday about a potential settlement, Mr. Trump said of the federal government that “they probably owe me a lot of money” for those investigations, later adding that he would “donate” any compensation he receives.
“I don’t know what the numbers are. I don’t even talk to them about it,” Mr. Trump said, seeming to refer to whether he was consulting with his personal legal team or the Justice Department. “All I know is that they would owe me a lot of money. But I’m not looking for money. I’d give it to charity or something.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement, “President Trump continues to fight back against all Democrat-led Witch Hunts,” including the Russian interference investigation and the federal indictments he faced before winning reelection last year.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement regarding the possibility of a conflict of interest involving top Justice Department officials that “in any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials.”
“[Blanche and Woodward] were both personally involved in this very case, and you don’t get more of a conflict of interest than that,” Dueffert said. “It’s just unimaginable that they should proceed.”
He called on both to recuse themselves, though he said, “I’m skeptical that will happen.”
In July, Bondi fired the Justice Department’s top ethics official.
Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney, said,”This is a clear example of the conflicts posed by installing the president’s personal defense lawyers to run the Justice Department.”
“These same loyalists ousted senior ethics officials who would have helped guide them through the proper way to handle the president’s unprecedented demand for taxpayer money,” said Young, who now leads the Justice Connection, a networking organization to help former Justice Department employees who have resigned or been fired.
On Capitol Hill, GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he has “a lot of optics concerns” about the president’s claims.
“I don’t think the president should be treated any differently than anyone else who was maybe a target of prosecution,” he told reporters Wednesday. “Obviously, if the prosecution prevailed, it should be a no-brainer that there wouldn’t be any compensation. If it’s one where the president as a defendant prevailed, … let’s talk about how that’s been handled in the past.”
Before a trial in either of the federal cases against Mr. Trump could take place, both were dismissed after the election at the request of the special counsel because the Justice Department’s longstanding policy is not to prosecute a sitting president.
