President Donald Trump struggled to answer questions from the press regarding reports that he is seeking to force the Department of Justice to pay him $230 million as compensation for being investigated during the Biden presidency.
A Tuesday report from The New York Times revealed that the president had made two complaints in 2023 and 2024 seeking damages for numerous violations of his rights.
Asked about the report by a journalist during a press conference in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump, 79, consistently appeared clueless about the subject.
“Are you asking the Justice Department to look into the federal investigations into you and look for compensation, and how much are you asking for?” the reporter asked Trump.
“Um, who is asking for what?” he replied, prompting her to repeat her question.
“Whose compensation? Whose compensation? I don’t get any compensation; I do it for nothing. I gave up my salary,” Trump replied, forcing the reporter to rephrase her question.
“I guess they probably owe me a lot of money for that,” the president finally said, before talking about his salary once again, which was not the subject of the reporter’s question.
“As far as the litigation and everything that’s been involved, yeah, 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 while we restore the White House,” he added.
While Trump’s complaints and requests for damages were made during Biden’s presidency, the Justice Department is now staffed by people loyal to Trump—including deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, who previously worked as Trump’s defense lawyer—raising ethical concerns over their ability to make impartial legal decisions.
His feigned ignorance of the lawsuits is at odds with earlier references he made last week, telling reporters, “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.”
The president also suggested that he might use any money paid to him by the DOJ to fund his controversial White House renovations, including the construction of a $250 million ballroom.
Photos released on Monday showed that construction of the ballroom was already underway, with construction crews seen demolishing the facade of the East Wing where the 90,000 square foot ballroom will be located.
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