President Donald Trump acknowledged to reporters Monday that he's seeking up to hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from the federal government for its scuttled investigations and prosecutions of him.
“As far as all of the litigation, everything that’s going to go, yeah, they probably owe me a lot of money," Trump said when asked about a New York Times report that he's filed administrative claims seeking $230 million in damages from the Justice Department.
Asked about the the $230-million figure, Trump said, "It could be."
“I don’t know what the numbers” are, Trump said. “I don’t even talk to them [the lawyers] about it.”
He also said he'd ultimately be the person approving the payout and that, if he granted it, he'd "do something nice" with the money.
“And you know that decision would have to go across my desk, and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself. In other words, did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you’re paying yourself in damages? But I was damaged very greatly, and any money that I would get I would give to charity,” he said.
He also said he could give money "to the White House while we restore the White House.”
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “I guess they owe me a lot of money. I’m not looking for money. I’m looking for really, it’s got to be handled in the proper way. We don’t want it to happen again,” he said, before adding, “You have to ask the lawyers about that.”
The two people who would be able to approve such claims, according to The New York Times, are the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general. Both men either served on Trump's personal criminal defense team or represented his co-defendant.
Trump has publicly pressured the Justice Department to carry out his wishes, including going after his perceived political opponents.
The New York Times report, citing people familiar with the matter, said that Trump had filed administrative claims in 2023 and 2024, with the former seeking damages from the Russia investigation and the latter seeking damages from an investigation into classified documents that he took with him from the White House after his first term in office.
The White House referred a request for comment on the Times report to the Justice Department.
The Justice Department said it had "no comment on the status of claims."
“In any circumstance," a DOJ spokesperson said, "all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials."
