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President Donald Trump is seeking $230 million in compensation from the Justice Department for what he describes as politically driven federal investigations that targeted him during and after the Biden administration, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The Times said senior department officials who once defended Trump or his allies could now be in the unusual position of deciding whether to approve a payout to their current boss. The newspaper reported that the situation “has no parallel in American history.”
The president’s request reportedly stems from the legal fees, reputation damage and financial losses he says he suffered during years of federal scrutiny, including multiple special counsel investigations launched under former President Joe Biden. Any potential settlement would require approval from the Justice Department’s top leadership, some of whom previously represented Trump before joining his administration.
“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,” President Trump said.
During the Biden years, Trump faced several federal cases, including Special Counsel Jack Smith’s two prosecutions. The first was in Washington, D.C., accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, while the second was in Florida over alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. Both were initiated in 2023 and were still pending when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
Prosecutors in New York and Georgia also examined President Trump’s business dealings and efforts to challenge the 2020 results. Separately, the Manhattan district attorney brought the “hush money” case involving payments to Stormy Daniels. Trump denied all wrongdoing, calling the prosecutions “election interference.”
The Times reported that President Trump’s demand portrays those investigations as abuses of power that caused financial harm. Legal experts told the newspaper that the claim faces long odds, given the broad legal immunity federal investigators typically have for official actions.
The report also noted that several of Trump’s current Justice Department appointees previously worked as his private attorneys, raising conflict-of-interest concerns as they now oversee a claim filed by the president himself.