Trump sought $230M from Justice Dept. to settle past investigations of him

Before his reelection, Donald Trump wanted the Justice Department to pay him as much as $230 million in damages for past investigations — a demand that was going nowhere until Trump blurted out a vague reference to it last week, top officials tell Axios.Now its fate is uncertain.Why it matters: The New York Times, which first reported Trump's demand, pointed out that "any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit."Now, of course, the Justice Department is stacked top to bottom with Trump loyalists. But there'd been no internal conversation about the matter since the inauguration, until Trump himself reopened it while talking to the press in the Oval Office last week, a senior administration official told us.Trump said, without explanation, that he'd brought "a great lawsuit" against DOJ based on its previous investigations of him, but added that it now "sort of looks bad — I'm suing myself, right?Behind the scenes: The officials told Axios that Trump's claims, filed during Joe Biden's presidency, came up internally during the transition but haven't been pursued since the 2024 election. The officials didn't confirm the total amount. A source involved with the transition between Trump's reelection and his inauguration in January said: "This came up during the transition and at first we thought: 'Oh, no. He's going to sue himself?' Then, when we realized it was filed against the Biden Justice Department, the word was that it was just dropped."The Times says that when Trump was out of office, he submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that's often the precursor to lawsuits: The first claim, in late 2023, seeks damages for the FBI and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to Trump's 2016 campaign.The second claim, in summer 2024, accuses the FBI of violating Trump's privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago for classified documents in 2022. That complaint also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records.Trump reopened the issue during an appearance in the Oval Office last week with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, as he was discussing the FBI's 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago. "I have a lawsuit that was doing very well. And when I became president, I said: 'I'm sort of suing myself,' " he said. "How do you settle the lawsuit? I'll say: 'Give me X dollars,' right? And I don't know what to do with the lawsuit — it's a great lawsuit. And now I won. It sort of looks bad — I'm suing myself, right? So I don't know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong, very powerful."The senior administration official told us there had been "no conversation about this at any level since Inauguration Day. It's like it didn't even exist.""But then the president said what he said, and here we are," the official added. "Beyond that, there has been no communication or movement on this whatsoever. It's not a thing — at least, it's not a thing right now."What they're saying: A spokesman for Trump's legal team said in a written statement to Axios that Trump "continues to fight back against all Democrat-led Witch Hunts, including the 'Russia, Russia, Russia' hoax and the un-Constitutional and un-American weaponization of our justice system by Crooked Joe Biden and his handlers." A Justice Department official said: "In any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials."

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