WASHINGTON — President Trump is seeking a financial settlement from the Justice Department to resolve his complaints of being improperly targeted by the FBI — and is considering using the funds to finance his under-construction White House ballroom.
The precise amount sought by the president to resolve a pair of complaints filed in 2023 and 2024 is unclear, but a New York Times report put the figure at up to $230 million.
“They probably owe me a lot of money, but if I get money from our country, I’ll do something nice with it, like give it to charity or give it to the White House,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday.
“We’re doing a great job on the White House. As you know, the ballroom is under construction.”
Demolition of the East Wing started Monday to make way for the ballroom, which Trump has estimated will cost $250 million.
The current fundraising haul for the ballroom is unclear, though Trump last month settled his lawsuit against YouTube for deplatforming him in 2021 and committed $22 million of the settlement to the project.
“It’s awfully strange to make a decision on how much I’m paying myself,” Trump told reporters, indicating that he expects to approve the amount.
“I’m not looking for money… It has got to be handled in a proper way,” he added. “We don’t want it to happen again”
Trump noted that he had settled many other lawsuits for large amounts of money, including gaining $15 million from ABC for alleged defamation by George Stephanopoulos.
“George Slopadopolous had to pay me a lot of money,” he said. “But any money I would get I would give to charity.”
Trump initially filed official paperwork challenging the FBI’s actions probing whether he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election — which ultimately produced no such proof.
The president separately objected to the August 2022 raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort by FBI officials to retrieve classified documents.
He spoke to reporters Thursday as if the alleged misconduct included his allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, which courts dismissed.
“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 rep for Trump’s legal team said in a statement.
“In any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials,” DOJ spokesman Chad Gilmartin said.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, runs day-to-day operations at the Justice Department.
