In April, the Justice Department wrote to the court, arguing that Donald Trump must have unilateral authority to destroy national monuments and build a new ballroom project without any congressional oversight because attending events “on the White House lawn” was too dangerous. That argument seemed more than dubious as the president enthusiastically planned a UFC fight extravaganza on the White House lawn that President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho would dismiss as unworthy of the office. At the time, the DOJ resolved this glaring inconsistency by ignoring it.
But following the arrest of five men arrested for an alleged plot to attack UFC Freedom 250, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate the court wrote calling for the immediate blessing of a 90,000 square foot ballroom because…they allegedly held the cage match and motocross jumps in the ballroom? I guess. The argument isn’t particularly clear, because the government’s case is being run by, to use the technical term, fucking idiots.
At least this letter appears to have been written by a lawyer and not by Trump himself. Progress!
The suspects, by letterplanned to “deploy explosive-armed drones in and around the event (UFC)” to force an evacuation, then “deploy snipers to shoot at ‘high-value targets’ within the fleeing crowd.” All of this, Shumate writes, “demonstrates the dire necessity of the East Wing project, with a ballroom designed to defend against such attacks.”
The mass and height of the ballroom will protect 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 currently taking place in “plastic tents that can’t even protect distinguished guests from bad weather, let alone high-caliber bullets or kamikaze drones”, …exactly the attack that this Sunday’s would-be assassins planned to launch.
Now consider the geometry of this passage. The UFC venue was built across the street from the White House, meaning that regardless of the mass and height of the ballroom, the new ballroom would be to the rear and side anyway. Not to mention the fact that an East Wing ballroom’s ability 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 scale to defeat this project.
When you think about it, we don’t talk enough about the parallels between Trump’s first electoral border wall and this ballroom. Two construction projects of dubious utility that Trump promised – baselessly – that American taxpayers would not have to pay for. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Instead, 15 billion dollars of public funds were spent there. This week, after Trump promised the $200 million ballroom would be privately financed, we learned that taxpayers would already have to pay $300 million for the project.
Claiming that the ballroom would have protected Trump from the attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was stupid, given that the proposed ballroom is too small to accommodate this event. This letter takes things 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 ceilings can handle the motorcycles jumping.
Which puts aside the question of whether there was ever a serious threat in the first place. THE alleged conspiracy involved a Christian online group that prosecutors said was motivated by “grievances over government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking all the water from communities, and other government actions.” The plot fell apart because the mother of one of the alleged teenage participants raised concerns.
FBI Director Kash “J. Edgar Boozer” Patel already taken a victory lap ” to celebrate the failure of the plot, explaining that “the allegedly planned attacks were stopped in their tracks” and that succeeding in doing so was “nothing extraordinary for this law enforcement team.” And we take him at his word on this. Even if this were a fully formed plot, it’s the kind of threat — just like the Correspondents’ Dinner — that falls well within the range of security threats that the government is capable of handling.
The DOJ’s landmark evidence that the president faces an unprecedented threat requiring 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 moved since Justice Richard Leon first considered it. Leon found that no law “comes close” to giving Trump the power to launch a nine-figure project on federal land without Congress. He called this financing a “Rube Goldberg thing.” He observed, with audible patience, that the “big hole” next to the White House was “a problem of the president’s own making.” The government’s response has been to continue revising the purpose of the ballroom, trying to connect it to the underground national security complex, as if the bunker cared about what lives above. Then it became necessary because the president couldn’t go out safely, even though he spent the majority of his time playing golf. Now it’s necessary to thwart a drone attack on a sporting event that the building couldn’t have hosted…and it never happened unless the president wanted to hold a private gladiatorial battle on his lawn.
Necessity is said to be the mother of invention. Here, ballroom was invented first, and the Justice Department continues to use frivolities to justify its rationale. Presidents don’t do it need go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner if they think it’s not safe. And presidents don’t do it need to organize half-naked oiled fights on the lawn if they think this exposes them to unacceptable risks. Presidents can best protect themselves against these threats by not carrying them out at all.
Or, based on what we know about this plot, the administration could also avoid this threat altogether by releasing the Epstein files and showing itself completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
You know, if it was something the administration could do.
Earlier: DOJ files prom brief that reads like a social message of truth – because Trump probably wrote it
Trump Justice Department imposes Rule 11 sanctions in ballroom case
Looks like Trump dictated another barely coherent ballroom briefing
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Think like a lawyer. Please feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter Or Blue sky if you’re interested in law, politics and a healthy dose of college sports news.
