Trump’s ‘absurd’ DoJ compensation bid would be rejected if he were anyone else, experts say | Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s effort to get his Justice Department to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars is based on specious legal claims that would likely be dismissed if he were any other American, according to a legal expert and a former Justice Department official who has handled damages claims against the government.

Trump has asked the Justice Department to pay him $230 million in damages, The New York Times reported last week. The amount represents the total of two separate claims in which Trump claims he is entitled to compensation due to investigations into ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign as well as the search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and the criminal prosecution that followed.

In the Mar-a-Lago complaint, Trump claims he was subjected to invasion of privacy, malicious prosecution and abuse of process related to the matter.

The effort has raised alarms and is considered a stunning act of corruption because the two Justice Department officials with the authority to approve the allegations are Trump appointees and allies. House Democrats sent a letter to the Justice Department this week calling the effort “patently illegal and unconstitutional.”

Trump is seeking compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a law that allows people to seek damages from the federal government. The law requires plaintiffs to first file an administrative request for damages; the government then has six months to settle the claim or refuse it. After six months, or if the request is denied, the applicant can take legal action. The government has not responded to any of Trump’s claims, but Trump has not filed a lawsuit. It is extremely difficult for a plaintiff to recover damages under the law.

The New York Times published the form Trump used to make his statement about the Mar-a-Lago raid — the only one that has become public so far. Trump asked the government to pay him $100 million in compensation. Additionally, a memo attached to the claim sought $100 million in punitive damages and indicated that the president suffered an actual loss of $15 million due to legal fees related to the case. It is not clear why the claim cover sheet seeks $100 million in damages when the memo lists $115 million in damages sought.

Trump’s legal costs in the case were covered by his Super Pac, Save America. Trump retained six lawyers for himself in the classified documents case, including Todd Blanche, who is now deputy attorney general.

Trump told reporters last week that he would donate money from a possible settlement to charity. The president has a habit of making charitable promises that never come to fruition.

The amount demanded by Trump far exceeds the amount typically paid by the Justice Department in administrative settlements under the FTCA. A Guardian review of FTCA claims filed against the federal government that were settled administratively from 2020 to 2024 shows the average settlement amount is approximately $51,684. The largest administrative settlement during this period was $3.55 million. The 139 administrative settlements the Justice Department reached last year with victims of Larry Nassar, the doctor who abused Olympic gymnasts and many others, totaled $138.7 million.

Those seeking a settlement typically aim high because their initial request sets a ceiling on what they can recover, said Gregory Sisk, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Still, he added, the amount Trump requested was difficult to take seriously.

“Typically, someone who asked for that amount of money was very quickly rejected, because it would be considered absurd to ask for that amount,” he said. “I cannot think of any previous claim, at least at this early stage, that has been settled that would involve a sum of money approaching this level.”

Cases including a demand for more than $4 million typically involved children who had been injured and had a lifetime of medical expenses and loss of earning capacity, according to Rupa Bhattacharyya, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked on FTCA claims, adding that it was also extremely rare for the government to accept such a large settlement without litigating it.

“A lot of the cases that are settled are small potatoes. If someone slipped and fell in the Smithsonian and broke their arm, they might settle that claim because it’s just not worth litigating,” she said. “But in large cases, it’s quite rare for claims to be settled at the administrative stage, because before they pay out taxpayers’ money, they want to make sure that they actually have a reason to do so.”

Normally, it would be easy for Justice Department lawyers to reject the overwhelming majority of the money Trump requested. The FTCA does not allow punitive damages.

“It is a frivolous claim to seek punitive damages under the FTCA. The statute is explicit,” Sisk said.

A key provision of the FTCA immunizes government officials when they exercise discretion within the confines of a policy set by the government. The Mar-a-Lago search warrants were approved by a magistrate judge.

“Since the case was prosecuted pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge who found there was probable cause, it would be a pretty tough hill to climb for the typical individual who claimed trespass during a search, even if the government ultimately concluded we weren’t going to file charges. Or charges were filed and you were acquitted,” Sisk said.

He added that he would be surprised if there were many previous cases where anyone subject to a search conducted after obtaining probable and good cause could obtain a settlement from the government.

Experts also question whether Trump would be able to recover attorney fees in the case. The FTCA caps the amount an attorney receives in a plaintiff’s recovery, Bhattacharyya said.

Outside of the FTCA, when litigants attempt to get their adversaries to pay their costs in court, judges generally consider whether the amount charged was reasonable.

None of this matters. Both the Assistant Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General have the authority to pursue FTCA claims in excess of $4 million. Both positions are currently held by men allied with Trump. Blanche, the deputy attorney general, defended Trump in the criminal charges against him. Save America also paid the legal fees of Stanley Woodward, the deputy attorney general who heads the department’s civil division and who defended Trump’s valet Walt Nauta in the classified documents case. The two men have final authority in approving regulations.

That raised concern and created serious legal ethics problems, said Joseph Tirrell, who was the top ethics official at the Justice Department until his firing earlier this year. He is suing the department for unfair dismissal.

“There’s no one who can make this decision, whether it’s a career or a political appointment, that won’t be filled with ethical conundrums here,” he said. “In this case, there is no one to blame. The Attorney General faces conflicts just as big, if not bigger, than Mr. Woodward and Mr. Blanche. And, frankly, the risk that one or all of them will be fired if they do not make a decision consistent with the President’s wishes is just as big and applies to all employees of the Department of Justice, if not all employees of the Executive Branch.”

“In all circumstances, all Department of Justice officials follow the advice of career ethics officials,” said Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesman. This did little to reassure Tirrell.

“Can you imagine an ethics officer, a career leader, making that decision without thinking, ‘Well, if I don’t tell them what they want to hear, I’m going to lose my job’? he said.

There may also be little information provided to the public once a settlement is reached. Details of administrative regulations are generally not disclosed to the public, although some basic details are included in a year-end report to Congress.

In an essay published this week, Bhattacharyya presented a solution for the Justice Department to respond to Trump’s claims: do nothing.

The FTCA does not require the department to respond to Trump’s settlement request, and the president can pursue it in court, where he will have to more fully flesh out his arguments before a judge and present evidence in the public eye.

“If President Trump wants to assert his rights in court, let him try, as thousands of tort plaintiffs do every year,” she wrote.

“Settling President Trump’s administrative claims before there has been any opportunity to test or defend these claims should not be a solution for the Justice Department if it wants to maintain some integrity, a commitment to justice, and a sense of responsibility for the American taxpayer dollars entrusted to it.”

Will Craft and Hugo Lowell contributed reporting