Before his reelection, Donald Trump wanted the Justice Department to pay him as much as $230 million in damages for past investigations — a demand that was going nowhere until Trump blurted out a vague reference to it last week, top officials tell Axios. • Now its fate is uncertain.

Why it matters: The New York Times, which first reported Trump's demand, pointed out that "any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit."

Now, of course, the Justice Department is stacked top to bottom with Trump loyalists. But there'd been no internal conversation about the matter since the inauguration, until Trump himself reopened it while talking to the press in the Oval Office last week, a senior administration official told us. • T

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