Democrats are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s reported demands that the Department of Justice pay him upwards of $200 million in restitution for its criminal investigations into him.
“It is completely absurd,” New York Rep. Dan Goldman told CNN. “The notion that there was anything wrong with those investigations is preposterous, and then to demand that his own Justice Department, his own employees, pay him $200 million, for who knows what, is a shakedown of his own government.”
The New York Times first reported Trump’s demands on Tuesday, writing that the request “has no parallel in American history.”
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Trump filed a pair of previously undisclosed “administrative claims” in 2023 and 2024, respectively, seeking damages for the alleged violation of his rights presented by the DOJ probes into his campaign’s purported ties to Russia and his handling of classified documents.
When asked Tuesday whether he was seeking $230 million from the government he oversees, Trump seemingly confirmed the Times’ reporting.
“That decision would have to go across my desk. It’s strange to make a decision where I am paying myself, it’s one of those cases where you have to decide how much you are paying yourself in damages,” Trump said, adding: “I don’t know the numbers, I don’t talk to them about it. I know they owe me a lot of money.”
“If I get money from our country, I will do something nice with it, like give it to charity or give it to the White House,” he told reporters at a White House event to celebrate the Hindu holiday of Diwali.
Administrative claims are not technically lawsuits. They are first submitted to the DOJ to determine if a settlement can be reached without a formal federal lawsuit. Only if the defendant rejects the claim can a lawsuit proceed. It is unlikely the DOJ will push back on Trump’s requests, considering all remaining top officials at the department are his close allies with a history of carrying out his orders.
According to the Times, Trump submitted administrative claims that serve as precursors to lawsuits, alleging his rights were violated in the investigation into possible Russian coordination with the Trump campaign in 2016 and again when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago property in 2022 during its probe into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
President Trump on NYT reporting he's seeking $230 million from the DOJ in response to the investigations into him: "With the country, it's interesting because I'm the one that makes the decision, right? And that decision would have to go across my desk. And it's awfully strange… pic.twitter.com/i86VXEJVTq
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 21, 2025
One of the claims, submitted in 2023, requests damages in connection with the DOJ’s investigation of interference in the 2016 presidential election by Russia, and the country’s potential connections to Trump’s campaign that year.
This would not be the first DOJ investigation into the probe since Trump returned to the White House in January. Attorney General Pam Bondi in August asked for a grand jury investigation into a number of Obama-era officials — all of them unnamed — who she said “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork” for an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and its attempts to influence U.S. elections.
Another administrative claim filed by Trump in mid-2024 accuses the FBI of violating Trump’s rights by conducting a search of his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in 2022. The raid was part of its investigation into missing classified government documents after Trump left office.
Trump pled not guilty in 2023 to nearly 40 criminal counts related to his mishandling of sensitive documents. During its investigation, the DOJ found 26 boxes of more than 300 classified documents at the Mar-a-Lago property.
Another claim alleged Merrick B. Garland, then the attorney general, Christopher A. Wray, then the FBI director, and Jack Smith, then the special counsel investigating Trump, of “harassment” intended to sway the electoral outcome.”
“This malicious prosecution led President Trump to spend tens of millions of dollars defending the case and his reputation,” the claim said.
Democrats on Capitol Hill reacted with outrage following the news of a potential settlement.
“Donald Trump wants his own DOJ to pay him $230 million of taxpayer money because they tried to hold him accountable for his corruption,” Sen. Andy Kim posted to X. “At what point do we start calling this exactly what it is: theft of the American people?”
House Judiciary Democrats posted on X that Ranking Member Jamie Raskin is preparing an investigation into Trump’s claims.
“Ranking Member @RepRaskin is launching an investigation into this $230 million shakedown of the taxpayers by Trump, which will be decided by his “personal lawyers” appointed to DOJ, including Todd Blanche! Beyond the blatant conflict of interest, this violates the Constitution’s Domestic Emolument Clause,” the post reads. “Details soon.”
“The ultimate Shutdown Shakedown…While tens of millions of Americans desperately try to pay for groceries, healthcare, and child care, Trump is robbing America blind,” House Judiciary Dems said in a second post. “This is exactly why the Constitution forbids the president from taking any money from the government outside of his official salary. This is Donald Trump First, America Last—the Gangster State at work, billionaires shaking down the people.”
Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin told the Times, in reference to the potential for department officials being conflicted in the situation, “In any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials.”
“President 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 spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to The Hill.
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