Reversal came after months of government claims that no final plan existed
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes announced her decision at the close of a four-hour hearing in Washington, telling government lawyers 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.”
The judge said the inquiry may be led by a special master, a judicial officer with “full investigatory powers” whom she has not yet appointed. If the government rejects her selection, Reyes said, she will conduct the inquiry herself. She also ordered officials to preserve all relevant documents so the “court can conduct an inquiry without the loss of evidence.”
Reyes stressed that opening the investigation does not mean the court has found — or will find — that any government lawyers violated their professional obligations. But the relatively unusual move suggests she is finished taking the administration at its word, something she said she had done since local historic preservation advocates and golfers filed suit in February. “Trial lawyers sometimes tell juries, ‘Trust but verify,’” Reyes said from the bench. “For months, the court trusted, but did not verify. No longer.”
Friday’s hearing was the third in as many weeks, called days after Justice Department attorneys confirmed in a Wednesday-night filing what they had long contested: that a plan exists to transform the municipal course into a championship-level venue. The filing 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 that it would soon “close East Potomac Park south of Buckeye Drive, including the Golf Course, consistent with the President’s directive.”
For months, Justice Department attorneys representing the Interior Department and the park service had maintained in court filings and hearings that no such plan was yet final — despite Trump’s social media posts proclaiming otherwise. The acknowledgment came just days after Reyes ordered a halt to tree-clearing and major renovations at the park, an order the government promptly appealed.
Reyes opened Friday’s proceedings by quoting D.C. Bar Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3, which prohibits lawyers from knowingly making — or failing to correct — false statements to a court. She asked Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., the third-highest-ranking official at the Justice Department, 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 has not read every transcript in the case. “We have lots of binders,” he added. “I bet you do,” Reyes replied.
Under questioning over the next four hours, Woodward told the judge that the planning commission submission had been in the works for several weeks. No one from the government had 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?” Reyes said. She also demanded to know whether officials had not been truthful when they told her last Monday that they were not aware of the park closure Trump had posted about that same morning.
Details of the plan remained hazy in the courtroom on Friday, and Reyes spent most of the hearing questioning Woodward. At one point, she accused him of “playing games with words” at the prior week’s hearing and said she refused to do so again. And when Woodward characterized Trump’s Truth Social announcements as a matter of executive privilege, Reyes erupted: “He posted it!”
A protracted exchange turned on whether Trump’s posts announcing the forthcoming closure constituted “plans.” Woodward said the posts are similar to executive orders, directing an agency to take an action without guaranteeing it will actually occur. The course is not currently scheduled to close on Nov. 15, he said, though the government has filed a “notice of intent” to close it, in keeping with Reyes’ order requiring 10 days’ written notice. “We would never violate the court’s order,” Woodward said, drawing laughter from many of the spectators who filled the courtroom.
Wednesday’s filing also disclosed that the park service entered into a new lease agreement Wednesday with the National Links Trust, the nonprofit that operates the course. Under that agreement, which the nonprofit confirmed, National Links Trust will continue operating the District’s other two municipal golf courses under a 50-year lease but will cease operations at East Potomac “as of close of business on or before November 15.”
The legal fight kicked into high gear earlier this month, when the administration cut down hundreds of trees at the park with less than a day’s notice. Officials denied the clearing was part of a broader renovation plan; Reyes called it a pretext for beginning work without proper approvals. On Monday she extended her ban on further tree removal and required 10 days’ written notice before any closure or irreversible modification of East Potomac — a ruling the administration quickly appealed. In a 70-page opinion in which she said the case had become about much more than golf, she wrote, “Rarely, if ever, has the United States Department of Justice urged a federal court not to believe the sitting president.”
Within hours of that ruling, Trump doubled down on social media, saying Reyes “has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project.” The judge responded by scheduling Friday’s hearing and ordering the government — Woodward specifically — to “come prepared to state” whether it still maintained there was no final plan.
The administration says the closure is necessary regardless of the golf renovations because of “the deteriorated seawall that is currently crumbling into the Potomac River and is a safety hazard in a state of significant disrepair” on the man-made peninsula. Jessica Bowron, the park service’s acting director, said in an official declaration this week that the century-old seawalls have “been compromised” over time, leaving “large sections of the sidewalk adjacent to the seawall” underwater twice daily — and more often after extreme weather — and causing voids in the sidewalk and nearby grassy areas as well as “significant damage to the trees along the seawall.” The agency has documented the deteriorating conditions in various reports and photographs in recent years, as recently as mid-September, she said.
Reyes asked repeatedly what specific safety issues the deteriorating seawall posed. Woodward cited concerns about “people falling into the Potomac [River]” — which drew a laugh from the judge — but declined to elaborate beyond the photographs in the court filings. Reyes agreed the erosion should be addressed but questioned why officials had made no plans to fix it, or even mentioned the topic, at any earlier point in the case. Woodward said Friday the repairs would cost between $150 million and $400 million; he did not answer how much the overall golf course renovations would cost.
This week was also the first time Trump cited safety risks at the park. His Wednesday-night post 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 administration has made a similar safety 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; the arts center’s presidentially appointed board voted in September to close it, citing structural decay that posed safety risks.
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 administration from using any money for the seawall project to advance the golf course renovations. He proposed language for year-end spending legislation that would bar federal money from redesigning or expanding the 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 designated 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.” The coming closure will reach well beyond the golf course, cutting off public access to recreational areas and much of the three-mile perimeter loop used by runners and cyclists — and locals worry the golf course redevelopment would change what Congress ordered the land to be.