President Donald Trump is pushing the Justice Department to approve a $230 million settlement related to investigations he faced during both the Biden administration and his first term in office, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions who spoke with ABC News on Tuesday.

The unusual proposal — first reported by The New York Times — would represent an unprecedented case of the Justice Department paying a sitting president to resolve claims stemming from earlier federal probes. Approval would require sign-off from senior department officials, some of whom previously represented Trump or his allies in private practice.

The settlement talks trace back to two administrative claims filed by Trump’s attorneys in 2023 and 2024, after he left office.

The first claim sought damages related to the Russia investigation, which examined whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with the Kremlin — a probe he has long denounced as politically motivated.

The second claim, filed later and publicly disclosed last year, accused federal prosecutors of malicious prosecution under Special Counsel Jack Smith, and alleged that Trump’s privacy rights were violated during the FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, when agents recovered classified documents.

During an Oval Office meeting last week with Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump appeared to reference the ongoing settlement discussions — joking about the awkwardness of the situation.

“I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president I said, ‘I’m sort of suing myself,’” Trump said with a laugh. “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 it. It sort of looks bad, right? I’m suing myself.”

According to the Justice Department’s internal manual, any settlement of this magnitude would require formal authorization from either the Deputy Attorney General or the Associate Attorney General.

Department officials have not publicly commented on the negotiations, which remain in a preliminary stage.

If approved, the payout would mark a historic first — the U.S. government compensating a sitting president for alleged harm caused by prior federal investigations, a move certain to ignite political and legal controversy over the boundaries of executive power and accountability.