President Donald Trump has quietly maintained a pair of administrative claims against the Justice Department that reportedly seek roughly $230 million in compensation for what he alleges were politically motivated prosecutions under former President Joe Biden‘s administration.
Speaking last week in the Oval Office, Trump appeared to reference the pending claims, which were filed before his return to the presidency, while standing beside Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Trump: They raided my house. It was an illegal raid. I have a lawsuit that was doing very well and when I became president I said I’m sort of suing myself, I will say give me an X dollars pic.twitter.com/kt7rJHRWV8
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 15, 2025
“I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president, I said, I’m sort of suing myself,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “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. It sort of looks bad, I’m suing myself, right? So I don’t know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong, very powerful.”
Although Trump described it as a lawsuit, the filings are administrative claims, not formal court actions. Such complaints are submitted to the DOJ under a process known as a Standard Form 95, which allows individuals to seek financial redress from the government before pursuing litigation. If the department ultimately denies or ignores such claims, the claimant may then sue in federal court.
Trump’s two claims, filed before he became president for a second term, cover some of the most contentious chapters of his legal and political saga, the New York Times reported. One claim lodged in 2023 concerns the DOJ’s investigation into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. The other, lodged in 2024, focuses on the FBI’s 2022 raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where agents seized classified materials he retained after leaving office.
That FBI search later led to Trump’s federal indictment in Florida in the summer of 2023, but a judge dismissed the case before trial, months before the election last year. The Justice Department dropped its appeal following Trump’s return to the White House. Former special counsel Jack Smith, who led both the classified documents and election interference cases against Trump in 2024, spent more than $50 million pursuing those prosecutions before they ultimately collapsed.
Trump’s pursuit of compensation follows several years of steep legal bills he incurred that reached at least $107 million by March 2024, when he was simultaneously defending himself in multiple criminal cases and campaigning for reelection. That figure likely rose in the months before his November victory. He is also one of only three presidents in history to donate his salary, and has more recently donated it to help fund renovations to the White House.
Still, resolution of his claims could ultimately be handled by the very officials he appointed, including Blanche, who previously represented Trump as a defense attorney in several criminal matters. That could pose a significant conflict of interest, particularly as Trump’s critics have accused him of exerting undue influence over the DOJ.
LEAKED SIGNAL TEXTS FROM LETITIA JAMES PROSECUTOR DON’T VIOLATE ETHICS RULES, EXPERTS SAY
In response to a question on whether the claims would be handled ethically, department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said, “In any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials.”
A lawyer for Trump declined to comment, and the DOJ declined to comment on the status of the claims.