President Donald Trump could tear down the Statue of Liberty if he wanted, a Justice Department lawyer argued Friday.
Yaakov Roth, an attorney with the DOJ’s Civil Division, faced a two-hour grilling before a federal appeals court as he scrambled to defend Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom in a messy legal battle.
Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, needled Roth on the destruction of the 123-year-old East Wing to make way for the president’s 90,000-square-foot pet project.
“If the government decides very quickly and bulldozes the Statue of Liberty—the people whose ancestors, that was the first thing they saw coming to this country—but the government moved too fast, nothing can be done?” she asked.
“I think that’s right, yes,” Roth responded.
The remark concluded a testy exchange where Millett posed a hypothetical question: if the descendant of a slave who built the White House routinely walks by the structure to admire their ancestors’ work, “does the loss of the ability to see that sacrifice that was made—does that count as an injury in its own right?”
“If the hypothetical is that the White House has already been bulldozed, uh, then I don’t think somebody would have standing to object,” Roth maintained.
“As long as you move fast enough, nobody has standing to challenge it, even if they have that type of personal connection?” Millett continued to press him.
“So I do think that that is correct,” the DOJ lawyer said.
The three-judge panel, composed of Millett, Biden appointee Bradley Garcia, and Trump appointee Neomi Rao, appeared sympathetic to a lawsuit brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation challenging the construction of the ballroom.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In April, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued an order halting construction on the project, though he allowed work on the underground bunker to continue. But a federal appeals court swiftly put Leon’s order on hold, allowing construction to resume until a full hearing is held.
During Friday’s oral arguments, Roth insisted that nothing can stop Trump’s ballroom from getting built.
“Imagine, statutes were as clear as could be… ‘you have no authority to do this,’ and you’ve done it. There’s nothing to be done?” Millett asked. “If this were complete lawlessness by the government, it couldn’t be stopped?”
“That is our position,” Roth replied. “This is really something that can’t be stopped in courts. It can only be stopped by Congress.”
