President Donald Trump went on a lengthy four-part rant against a federal judge and argued that his $400 million ballroom was a matter of national security after being ordered to halt construction on the project.
Judge Richard Leon, a President George W. Bush appointee, clarified his order on Thursday blocking the building of the White House ballroom.
The senior district judge said construction of the ballroom could not continue without congressional approval, but indicated Trump could keep building his underground bunker.
The president did not take kindly to the project being derailed, issuing four posts that not only attacked the judge but claimed no future president could ever be safe at the White House without his ballroom.
“The White House doesn’t have a Ballroom (No Taxpayer Money!), which Presidents have desperately wanted and desired for over 150 years, but a Trump Hating, Washington, D.C. District Court Judge, a man who has gone out of his way to undermine National Security, and to make sure that this Great Gift to America gets delayed, or doesn’t get built, is attempting to prevent future Presidents and World Leaders from having a safe and secure large scale Meeting Place, or Ballroom,” Trump, 79, posted on Truth Social.
The rant didn’t stop there as Trump rattled off in the same sentence that the ballroom would be, “one with Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures, and Equipment, Protective Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams, Drone Proof Ceilings and Roofs, Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic, and Blast Proof Glass.”
He claimed the order meant that “no future President, living in the White House without this Ballroom, can ever be Safe and Secure at Events, Future Inaugurations, or Global Summits.”
The president argued that the ballroom is needed now and that the project materials are already on the way.
“If somebody, especially one with no standing, had a complaint — Why wasn’t it filed many months earlier, long before Construction was started? The Public Record was open for all to see,“ Trump claimed.
He accused the judge of “illegal overreach” and called him “out of control.”
“This is a mockery to our Court System! The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security, and no Judge can be allowed to stop this Historic and Militarily Imperative Project,” Trump declared.
But Leon was forceful in his 10-page opinion on Thursday, writing, “national security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity.”
He amended his order to specifically stop ballroom construction, but he said the president could keep building the military complex below-ground.
He specified that the construction that could proceed included any “top-secret excavations, bunkers, bomb-shelters, protective partitioning, military installations, and hospital and medical facilities.”
Leon clarified that the above-ground work was restricted to construction specifically “necessary to cover, secure, and protect such facilities.”
“In my view, the safety-and-security exception, as clarified, permits measures critical to national and presidential security to move forward pending final resolution of this case and any appeal,” he wrote.
It comes after Trump complained late last month that the lawsuit to stop him from building the massive 90,000-square-foot ballroom forced him to reveal the top-secret military base being built underneath.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation—which was created by Congress—sued Trump over the project late last year. It argued that the president had rejected oversight in violation of the law.
While the Trump administration announced plans to build the ballroom funded by donations last summer, Americans across the country were shocked last fall when Trump suddenly bulldozed the entire East Wing to make way for the rapidly expanding project.
In a bizarre follow-up post on Thursday, Trump claimed the person who filed the lawsuit was a “woman walking her dog” and claimed she had “absolutely NO STANDING to bring such a monumentally important case against our Country.”
As part of the proceedings, a member of the National Trust did attest to the harm that the project would cause her, but Alison K. Hoagland, an architectural historian at the center of the lawsuit, did not address walking a dog.
The Daily Beast reached out to both the National Trust and Hoagland for comment.
After Leon granted his first temporary injunction halting the ballroom late last month, the president immediately offered a new justification for why he believed construction could continue.
Reading from prepared notes at the time, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the entire ballroom was a matter of security.
“We have a drone-proof roof,” Trump declared before rattling off a series of other details, including bulletproof glass, medical facilities, air-handling systems, and more.
“That’s called: I am allowed to continue building as necessary,” Trump claimed.
The order on Thursday directly contradicted Trump’s argument that the entire project could continue.
Trump took another approach, arguing in his second post on Thursday that the case shouldn’t even have been brought and had no standing, despite the judge previously determining the National Trust did have standing.
“Every Political ‘Pundit’ has said this case is meritless, even a JOKE, but it’s not a joke to me, or the people of America. Too much hard work, time, and money spent in order that a Judge can claim that he ruled against ‘DONALD TRUMP,’ something which I have gotten very used to, BUT WILL NOT ACCEPT!” Trump wrote.
In a third post, the president ranted that the national security facilities could not be built without the ballroom.
“It’s all tied together as one big, expensive, and very complex unit, which is vital for National Security and Military Operations of the United States of America!” Trump claimed.
The president also argued that the decision on Thursday, “severely jeopardizes the lives and welfare of the people who work, and will be working, at the White House — including all future Presidents of the United States, and their families," as if the U.S. had not existed for 250 years without his ballroom.
In yet another post, published three hours later, Trump continued his rant about Leon, writing, “A Trump Hating Judge, for the first time in History, wants Congress to pay Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for a Glorious Ballroom, instead of accepting Donations from Great American Companies and Citizens.”
“This is a first — In other words, he wants Tax Payers to pay for the Ballroom, instead of Donors and Patriots! The Ballroom is FREE to our Country, A GIFT, and vital for our National Security.”
He added that Leon, who “works for another Judge who was just MANDAMUSED for the unfair and biased way he treats me,” should be ashamed of himself.
