DOJ urges appeals court to let Trump build ballroom, citing failed UFC attack

The Justice Department is asking a federal appeals court to let President Donald Trump continue building his planned White House ballroom, arguing that a thwarted attack on Trump’s recent Ultimate Fighting Championship event proves the need for the facility.

Brett Shumate, an assistant attorney general, urged a panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. to lift a lower court’s order blocking much of the construction on the 90,000-square-foot ballroom, contending that the project’s security features are needed to protect the president. As evidence, Shumate cited the foiled threat against the UFC event on the White House grounds over the weekend. Authorities have said they intercepted and stopped plans to fly explosives-laden drones over attendees and gun down people who fled.

“This latest assassination plot against President Trump and dignitaries at the White House demonstrates the compelling need for the East Wing Project, with a Ballroom designed to defend against just such attacks,” Shumate wrote in a letter filed Tuesday and made public early Wednesday.

Shumate argued that the ballroom’s planned “Drone Port and Sniper Nests” would have been able to “destroy any effort” to attack the UFC event, and that the ballroom’s “mass and height” would provide a shield for the White House.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered a halt to aboveground construction on the project in April, saying that the administration failed to demonstrate that the ballroom needed to be completed immediately for national security reasons. The three-judge appeals panel previously stayed Leon’s order while it considers the administration’s appeal, allowing construction to continue in the interim. Administration officials have said they expect the project to take at least two more years.

The Justice Department has previously argued that other threats to the president, such as a shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner, prove why the space is needed.

Those arguments did not sway Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who has kept his order in place. Two of three judges hearing the administration’s appeal — Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, and Patricia Ann Millett, an Obama appointee — appeared skeptical of the Justice Department’s arguments about Trump’s authority to build the ballroom in a court hearing this month.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued to halt the ballroom’s construction, has previously said it would continue its legal challenge despite the Justice Department’s past demands.

The shooting at the correspondents dinner was an “awful event” but did not change the legal reality that the Constitution and federal law require Trump to get Congress’s approval for the project, the trust said in April. The nonprofit, which is authorized by Congress to protect federal buildings, has pushed back sharply against the Justice Department’s contention that the lawsuit endangers the president.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that contractors’ internal estimates for the cost of the ballroom had risen to $600 million, with half paid by taxpayers. The White House put the cost at $200 million last year and said it would be paid by private donors.