In April, the Justice Department wrote the court, arguing that Donald Trump needed to have the unilateral authority to destroy national monuments and build a new vanity ballroom project without any congressional oversight because attending events “on the White House lawn” was too dangerous. This argument seemed more than a little dubious while the president enthusiastically planned a UFC fight extravaganza for the White House lawn that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho would dismiss as beneath the dignity of the office. At the time, the DOJ dealt with this glaring inconsistency by ignoring it.
But following the arrest of five men arrested over an alleged plot to attack UFC Freedom 250, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote the court calling for the immediate blessing of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom because… they would’ve held the cage match and motocross jumps in the ballroom? I guess. It’s not particularly clear what the argument is, because the government’s case is managed by, to use the technical term, fucking morons.
At least this letter looks like it was written by a lawyer and not Trump himself. Progress!
The suspects, per the letter, planned to “deploy drones armed with explosives in and around the [UFC] event” to force an evacuation, then “deploy snipers to fire upon ‘high value targets’ within the fleeing crowd.” All of which, Shumate writes, “demonstrates the compelling need for the East Wing Project, with a Ballroom designed to defend against just such attacks.”
The Ballroom’s mass and height will shield the White House grounds from attack, and give the Secret Service the visibility needed to identify attackers. … It will protect the President and guests at major events that are currently held in “plastic tents that cannot even protect highly esteemed guests from inclement weather, let alone high caliber bullets or kamikaze drones,” … exactly the attack that this Sunday’s would-be assassins plotted to launch.
Consider now the geometry of that passage. The UFC venue was built in front of the White House, meaning no matter the mass and height of the ballroom, the new ballroom would be back and to the side anyway. Not to mention the fact that the capacity of an East Wing ballroom to block DRONES from the South Lawn ranks right up there with the proposed border wall’s potential to stop immigrants. And drones don’t even need a ladder to defeat this project.
When you think about it, we don’t talk enough about the parallels between Trump’s first election border wall and this ballroom. Two construction projects of questionable utility that Trump promised — baselessly — that American taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay for. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Instead, $15 billion in taxpayer funds were spent on it. This week, after Trump promising that the $200 million ballroom would be privately funded, we learned that taxpayers are already expected to be on the hook for $300 million for the project.
Claiming that the ballroom would’ve protected Trump from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner attack was dumb, given that the proposed ballroom is too small to host that event. This letter takes it to another level, glossing over the proposition that they were going to hold THIS in a ballroom.
I don’t know, I’m not sure the ballroom’s ceilings can handle the motorcycle jumps.
Which all sets aside whether there was ever a serious threat in the first place. The alleged plot involved a Christian-based online group that prosecutors say were motivated by “grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions.” The plot fell apart because one of the alleged teen participant’s mother called in concerns.
FBI Director Kash “J. Edgar Boozer” Patel already took a victory lap to celebrate foiling the plot, explaining that the “allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold” and that pulling it off was “nothing out of the ordinary for this law enforcement team.” And we take him at his word on that. Even if this was a fully formed plot, it’s the sort of threat — exactly like the Correspondents’ Dinner event — well within the range of security threats the government is capable of handling.
The DOJ’s marquee evidence that the President faces an unprecedented threat demanding an unprecedented building is an operation the FBI Director describes as a routine day at the office.
None of this is incidental to the legal question, which has not budged since Judge Richard Leon first looked at it. Leon found that no statute “comes close” to giving Trump the authority to freestyle a nine-figure project on federal land without Congress. He called the funding a “Rube Goldberg contraption.” He observed, with audible patience, that the “large hole” beside the White House was “a problem of the President’s own making.” The government’s answer has been to keep revising what the ballroom is for, trying to tie it to the underground national security complex as though the bunker cares what lives above it. Then it became necessary because the president couldn’t safely go outside despite spending the majority of his time playing golf. Now the necessity is a foiled drone attack on a sporting event the building could not have hosted… and that never needed to happen except the president wanted to hold a private gladiatorial battle on his lawn.
Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention. Here, the ballroom got invented first, and the Justice Department keeps using frivolities to reverse engineer a justification for it. Presidents don’t need to go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner if they don’t think it’s safe. And presidents don’t need to host oiled up half-naked fighting on the lawn if they think it exposes them to unacceptable risk. Presidents can better protect themselves from these threats by just not doing them at all.
Or, based on what we know about this plot, the administration could also avoid this threat entirely by releasing the Epstein files and proving himself completely innocent of wrongdoing.
You know, if that was something the administration could do.
Earlier: DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post — Because Trump Probably Wrote It
Trump DOJ Courts Rule 11 Sanctions In Ballroom Case
Looks Like Trump Dictated Another Barely Coherent Ballroom Brief
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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