A Washington federal judge is opening a formal inquiry into whether government lawyers made misrepresentations in court about President Donald Trump’s plans to renovate a community golf course.
Judge Ana Reyes of the US District Court for the District of Columbia announced the inquiry during a Friday hearing in litigation over the fate of the East Potomac Park golf course, the latest target of Trump’s efforts to reshape the capital’s historic landmarks and spaces.
“For months the court has trusted but not verified,” Reyes said. “No longer.”
The judge said she could conduct the inquiry herself, or it could be conducted by a special master appointed by the court to determine if Justice Department or agency lawyers made false statements, withheld information, or otherwise violated ethics rules. Reyes also ordered the administration to preserve all documents and communications about the golf course planning process.
She emphasized that the opening of the inquiry does not mean that the judge has or will find the government violated ethics rules.
The inquiry is the latest escalation in ongoing clashes between Reyes and Justice Department lawyers throughout the case. Reyes has rebuked the government for cutting down hundreds of trees in the park without enough notice. She has also repeatedly cast doubt on government officials’ attempts to justify those tree removals as unrelated to Trump’s desired changes for the course.
The golf course case, brought by the DC Preservation League and two Washington area golfers, is part of a slew of legal challenges to the president’s projects to leave his visual mark on Washington.
Trump has demolished the White House’s East Wing to make room for a new ballroom, changed the color of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool basin, paved over the Rose Garden, and attempted to rename and close the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Course Correction
Reyes’ ethics probe announcement followed a tense three-hour hearing, which the judge kicked off by reading out the DC Bar’s conduct rules on candor to the court, which prohibit lawyers from knowingly making false statements.
Reyes sharply questioned a top Justice Department official on when the Trump administration began to plan to overhaul the golf course.
The Justice Department had confirmed to the court Wednesday that the golf course and surrounding areas will close on Nov. 15, after Trump posted about the closure and renovation multiple times on his social media platform Truth Social.
It was an about-face for the department, whose lawyers insisted in court nine days before its Oct. 28 notice that they weren’t aware of any plans to close the course, notwithstanding Trump’s social media posts.
Trump announced on Oct. 18 that the Department of the Interior “has developed a plan” to build a new golf course on the site of the East Potomac Park course, which “will be closed” on Nov. 15 for an approximately 15-month renovation.
However, Stanley Woodward, DOJ’s third-ranking official, told Reyes during an Oct. 19 hearing that “there is no plan to close the course.”
Reyes appeared incredulous at times during the Friday hearing at Woodward’s claims that he couldn’t “opine” on Trump’s meaning behind his Oct. 18 social media.
“Are you kidding me right now? Seriously, Mr. Woodward, come on,” Reyes said at one point during the hearing, after he disclosed that a submission to the National Capital Planning Commission on the golf course design was in the works for weeks, and DOJ hadn’t told the judge.
“Am I to understand that, for weeks, someone has been putting pen to paper on a submission to redesign the golf course” to the planning commission, “when Department of Justice attorneys were representing to me that there is no plan?” Reyes asked, before ordering the department to provide the names of everyone who worked on the submission.
The judge also repeatedly questioned Woodward on when the plan to close the golf course on Nov. 15 was first made, and whether it was before the Oct. 19 hearing.
“You are telling me that even now, even now, after DOJ has admitted and conceded that there was a plan to close the course” in November, that “there was no plan” to do so on Oct. 18, Reyes asked Woodward. “You are saying to me, do not believe the president?”
Woodward said he “didn’t utter those words” and that he takes issue with “hypothesizing” what the president meant when he said the course will close in November.
“The third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice is telling me, telling a federal court, that he cannot say that when the president posted, ‘the course will close on November 15th,’ what he meant was, ‘the course will close November 15th’?” Reyes said.
Woodward said this “seems to fall squarely within the executive privilege.”
“That is quite an extraordinary view of executive privilege,” Reyes replied.
Reyes has previously barred the government from removing more trees from the park while the case continues, and to notify the court ten days before the park is closed or undergoes major changes.