WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge is launching a formal inquiry into potential misconduct by Trump administration officials in the lawsuit over East Potomac Park, including whether they repeatedly misrepresented the president's plans for the municipal D.C. golf course.
District Judge Ana Reyes ordered Friday's hearing — the third in as many weeks — to seek clarity from government lawyers days after they acknowledged in writing Wednesday that there is a plan to transform the municipal golf course into a championship-level venue, closing it and much of the surrounding park in mid-November.
For months, Justice Department attorneys representing the Interior Department and National Park Service had maintained in court filings and hearings that such a plan was not yet final, despite President Trump's social media statements proclaiming otherwise.
Their abrupt confirmation on Wednesday night prompted Reyes to call both sides back into court, just days after she ordered a halt to tree-clearing and major renovations at the park (which the government promptly appealed).
Reyes opened Friday's hearing by quoting the D.C. Bar Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3, which prohibits lawyers from knowingly making or failing to correct false statements to the court. She asked Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., who is leading the government's defense, whether there was anything he would like to correct.
"Not to my knowledge," Woodward said, explaining that he hasn't read every transcript in the case. "We have lots of binders," he said, to which Reyes replied: "I bet you do."
Over the next four hours, Reyes grilled Woodward about the timing and status of the administration's renovation plans. She demanded to know whether officials had not been truthful when they told her last Monday that they were not aware of the park closure that Trump had posted about that same morning.
Reyes called the lawyers' claims into doubt for two main reasons.
Government lawyers acknowledged for the first time in their Wednesday filing that the administration is closing the park next month, both for golf course renovations and to address the man-made peninsula's crumbling seawall. And they said in court that they submitted those renovation plans to the National Capital Planning Commission for review on Friday.
Under questioning, Woodward told the judge that the submission had been in the works for several weeks. But, as Reyes fired back incredulously, no one from the government mentioned that in the previous hearings, one of which lasted seven hours.
"Am I to understand that for weeks someone has been putting pen to paper on a submission to design the golf course … while this litigation was ongoing, while Department of Justice employees were representing to me that there was no plan?" she said.
The hearing ended with Reyes announcing that she would "open a formal inquiry into whether agency officials and employees, including agency attorneys and [Justice Department] attorneys, have made misrepresentations to the court and otherwise violated applicable ethical rules."
Reyes said that inquiry may be led by a special master, whom she has not yet appointed but described as a judicial officer with "full investigatory powers." Reyes said if the government rejects her special master, she will conduct the inquiry herself.
Reyes stressed that the opening of an investigation does not mean that the court has found or will find evidence that any government lawyers have violated their professional obligations.
But the relatively unusual move suggests that the judge is finished taking the administration at its word, as she said she has done since local historic preservation advocates and golfers first filed suit in February.
The legal fight kicked into high gear earlier this month when the Trump administration cut down hundreds of trees with less than a day's notice. Officials have denied that the tree-clearing was part of a broader plan to renovate the golf course, but Reyes called it a pretext for beginning work without proper approvals. On Friday, she also ordered the government officials to preserve all relevant documents so the "court can conduct an inquiry without the loss of evidence."
"Trial lawyers sometimes tell juries, 'Trust but verify,'" Reyes said from the bench on Friday. "For months, the court trusted, but did not verify. No longer."
So there is a plan. The judge wants to know where it came from
On Monday, Reyes extended her ban on further tree removal and required the government to provide 10 days' written notice before closing or irreversibly modifying East Potomac, which the administration quickly appealed.
She issued a blistering 70-page opinion in which she said the case had become about much more than golf.
"Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting president," Reyes wrote.
Within hours of Reyes' ruling, Trump took to social media to double down on his plan to start renovations in November, saying Reyes "has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project."
In response, Reyes scheduled Friday's hearing and ordered the government — including Woodward specifically — to "come prepared to state" whether it continues to maintain that there is no final plan, among other details.
But the reply came even sooner, in a Justice Department filing Wednesday night.
Government lawyers said the National Park Service would submit a plan Friday to the National Capital Planning Commission to review "a rendering designed by Tom Fazio for a World Class, championship-level golf course that is capable of hosting major events."
And they said they would soon "close East Potomac Park south of Buckeye Drive, including the Golf Course, consistent with the President's directive."
The filing says the National Park Service entered into a new lease agreement with the National Links Trust — the nonprofit that operates the golf course — on Wednesday.
Under that new agreement, which was confirmed by the National Links Trust, the organization will continue to operate D.C.'s other two municipal golf courses under a 50-year lease, but cease operations at East Potomac "as of close of business on or before November 15."
But details of that plan were still hazy in the courtroom on Friday. Reyes spent most of the hearing questioning Woodward, the third-highest-ranking official at the Justice Department.
At one point, Reyes accused Woodward of "playing games with words" at last week's hearing and said she refused to do so again. Later, when Woodward characterized Trump's Truth Social announcements as a matter of executive privilege, Reyes erupted: "He posted it!"
One particularly protracted back-and-forth focused on whether Trump's Truth Social posts announcing the golf course's forthcoming closure constituted "plans."
Woodward said that Trump's posts are similar to executive orders, directing an agency to take an action but not guaranteeing it will actually occur. To that end, he said the course is not currently scheduled to close on Nov. 15, but that the government has filed a "notice of intent" to close it in keeping with the judge's order requiring 10 days' written notice.
He said "we would never violate the court's order," drawing laughs from many of the spectators who filled the courtroom.
What's the deal with the seawall? New claims of danger emerge
The East Potomac closure will extend far beyond the golf course, removing public access to recreational areas and much of the three-mile perimeter loop beloved by runners and cyclists.
The administration says the closure is necessary — regardless of the golf course renovations — "as a result of the deteriorated seawall that is currently crumbling into the Potomac River and is a safety hazard in a state of significant disrepair."
Jessica Bowron, the acting director of the National Park Service, said in an official declaration this week that the century-old seawalls have "been compromised" over time. As a result, she said, "large sections of the sidewalk adjacent to the seawall are underwater twice daily" and more often after extreme weather events.
All of that has caused voids in the sidewalk and nearby grassy areas, she said, as well as "significant damage to the trees along the seawall." Bowron said the National Park Service has documented the deteriorating conditions in various reports and photographs in recent years, as recently as mid-September.
Reyes asked repeatedly what specific safety issues the deteriorating seawall posed. Woodward said there were concerns about "people falling into the Potomac [River]" — which made Reyes laugh — but declined to expand beyond the photos in the court filings. The judge agreed that the erosion should be addressed but questioned why the administration officials had not made plans to do so — or even mentioned the topic — at any other point since the lawsuit started.
This week was also the first time that Trump mentioned safety risks associated with the park. His post on Wednesday night focused on the golf course itself, particularly holes in the driving range net.
"Golf balls soar through the holes at high speed and hit unexpecting Golfers — including a White House staffer who was, sadly, hit violently in the chest," Trump wrote. "We will hold the judge, Ana C. Reyes, fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course."
The Trump administration has made a similar case in its threats to tear down the Kennedy Center — the subject of another heated court battle — if it is not renamed after the president. Its board of directors, packed with presidential appointees, voted in September to close the arts center, citing structural decay that posed safety risks.
Woodward said under questioning Friday that the seawall repairs would cost between $150 million and $400 million, but did not answer how much the overall golf course renovations would cost.
On Thursday, Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, sent a letter to House and Senate appropriations leaders asking them to block the Trump administration from using any money for the seawall project in order to advance his golf course renovations.
He proposed language they could attach to year-end spending legislation that would block federal money from redesigning or expanding the golf courses, altering roads, removing healthy trees, constructing new buildings or reshaping the land.
"It would be unconscionable to let President Trump direct taxpayers to pay for the most expensive portion of the park's maintenance needs and then take it from them to create a golf course catering to him and his billionaire buddies," Huffman wrote. "Congress must ensure it does not happen."
Congress passed an act designating East Potomac as a public park in 1897, declaring that the land be "forever held and used as a park for the recreation and pleasure of the people." Locals worry the golf course redevelopment would change that.
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