Golfers play past felled trees at East Potomac Golf Links in Washington D.C., US, on Sunday.
One of the tensest showdowns between the Trump administration and the federal bench in Washington, DC, came to a head on Monday in a marathon court hearing over President Donald Trump’s efforts to overhaul a public golf course that has been the subject of months of litigation.
Trump early Monday doubled down on his plan to close and renovate the golf course in Washington, DC, saying construction would begin “IMMEDIATELY” despite a judge’s order to provide three days’ notice ahead of any construction.
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the government does not “need an approval” to proceed with the construction.
“Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY! The finished product will be World Class, and bring income and great prestige back to D.C.,” he wrote.
By the end of the day, Trump was still fuming about it.
Just before midnight, the president posted on Truth Social: “’Trash Island,’ Washington, D.C., the nickname for the broken and dilapidated Golf Course that is the subject of frivolous litigation in the United States Court System, before a judge that seems not to want Greatness for our Capital or our Nation (but who knows?), has been badly managed for so many decades that it is a completely nonviable and unsafe Project.”
He said his plan “will turn Trash Island into an Island of Beauty and Success!”
But, Trump’s dream of renovating the East Potomac Golf Course is already the subject of a legal fight as preservationists and golfers seek to stop the president from changing the public park.
The case may seem relatively minor compared to some of the other sweeping legal battles of Trump’s second term. But the litigation has demanded the attention of several top attorneys from the Justice Department, who have sought to defend the actions government officials who are overseeing the course and have tried distinguish them from the president’s public statements about his intentions for the grounds.
US District Judge Ana C. Reyes, who is overseeing the case, issued an order last week that requires the government to give at least three days’ notice before making any “irreparable modification” to the course.
Reyes and the third-highest ranking Justice Department official, Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward, sparred repeatedly over the information she was demanding from the administration. The question in the case, since last Monday, had largely been about the administration removing, with less of a day’s notice to the court, of 400-plus trees from the park earlier this month.
But the hearing on Monday quickly turned into a clash over what Trump wrote on social media, the Justice Department’s ability to defend separate assertions made by the National Park Service in court, and how far the federal trial-level court can go to demand answers from the executive branch.
“I don’t know what to do, when I keep getting different stories,” Reyes told Woodward as the hearing began with a heated moment.
“I have, on the one hand the president of the United States saying to the American people … there is a final plan,” Reyes said hours later in the same hearing Monday. “I have you all telling me, witnesses saying what they’re saying, there is no final plan … which is it?”
Robert Stander – a DOJ attorney who was handling the bulk of the administration’s legal arguments – struggled to answer the question directly and Reyes rejected his attempts to compare the social media posts to an executive order that was just the start of an agency’s work on a project, rather than a final decision.
Woodward returned to the line of questioning at the end of the hearing and told Reyes there was “no plan to close the course, as those words have their literal meaning.”
He told the judge that asking Stander, a lower-level attorney that did not go through Senate confirmation, to contradict the president put his colleague in a “difficult” position.
Reyes is considering whether to issue a longer-term order limiting what the administration can do to the course, including cutting down more trees.
Last week, Reyes presided over a testy hearing in which she said she was “furious” with the administration for removing hundreds of trees without proper notice. The government claimed the removals were routine maintenance unrelated to any plan to renovate the golf course. Reyes ordered that no more trees be cut down before October 26.
The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion asking for Reyes’ removal from the case, accusing her of having a “disdain for the Trump Administration.” Reyes over the weekend denied that motion and refuted the government’s claims against her.
In his Monday post to Truth Social, Trump disparaged Reyes a “crazed lunatic.”
The golf course is one of several renovation projects Trump is working on in Washington. The president’s desire to turn the public course into a professional course – a renovation that could cost between $20 million and $49 million – has angered those who fear it may take away a public and affordable place to play golf in the nation’s capital.
Administration officials express ignorance to Trump’s intentions
Amid the tense exchanges between DOJ and the judge were hours of testimony from government officials charged with oversight of federal public grounds – testimony that turned the proceedings into a grueling drag through bureaucratic procedures of the National Park Service.
Multiple government officials who oversee the golf course expressed ignorance to Trump’s latest assertions about the future of the course.
The acting director of the National Park Service, Jessica Bowron – who signed off on this month’s move to cut down the 400-plus trees – said she was not aware of plans to close East Potomac Park next month, nor had she been in any discussions about renovating the course.
She and other officials say their work on the removing the trees was carried out under a directive that they implement recommendations from 2019 for making the course look more it did when it was first built, in a proposal known as the Cultural Landscape Report.
Reyes has said that she believed that explanation was a pretext for giving the administration cover to start the renovation. She quizzed officials Monday on the “coincidence” that the administration suddenly rushed to implement a seven-year-old proposal – specifically, only its recommendations to cut down certain trees – just as Trump was demanding work on his overhaul to begin.
Greg Wischer – a political appointee at the Interior Department who has coordinated Trump’s directives for “beautifying” Washington, DC – testified that he came across of 2019 landscape recommendations as part of research in recent months for what his agency could do to “clean up” the course. He suggested that those “clean up” efforts were separate from the Trump-ordered redesign.
DOJ assertions of privilege prevented him from answering several questions about key meetings and conversations that preceded the tree removals. But his testimony revealed that for months he has been receiving “conceptual proposals” for renovating the course from famed golf course designer Tom Fazio and his son Gavin. Wischer first saw the rendering posted by Trump on Sunday last week, according to his testimony, when Gavin Fazio texted it to his personal phone.
Later in the hearing, Reyes asked Stander whether there was a contract with the Fazios to redo the course and asked the other attorneys at the defense table when Stander said he did not know the answer.
Woodward stood to clarify that there was no such contract.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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