Trump feels ‘very sad’ and unappreciated, judge and DOJ clash over golf course case: latest updates

After a long and tumultuous hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes is considering whether to issue a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump administration from removing more trees from a historic golf course in a public park in Washington, DC.

Asset job plans to close the East Potomac Park Golf Course on Sunday and again on Monday, announcing it would become a “world-class championship golf course.”

The administration cut down hundreds of trees from the public course even though litigation brought by DC residents and the DC Preservation League was still ongoing. The judge had ordered officials to give advance notice of any changes. When they didn’t, Reyes admitted she was furious with the government and ordered Interior Ministry officials to testify.

On Monday, Acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron and Interior Department Deputy Chief of Staff Greg Wischer said they were unaware of plans for a new course and that hundreds of healthy, non-invasive trees had been removed as part of an existing 2019 renovation plan. Reyes disputed those claims.

“I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think those trees were cut down because of the 2019 (plan). There’s no reasonable inference that that was the case. That doesn’t mean the people who testified lied. They may have been told, ‘Here’s what you do,'” she said.

Trump called the judge a “crazy lunatic” and administration lawyers filed a motion to disqualify her ahead of Monday’s hearing. Reyes denied the motion.

When Justice Department lawyers insisted that Trump could not be controlled by the justice system, Reyes told them that this was contrary to what the Founders meant when they wrote in the Federalist Papers that “ambition should check ambition.”

Reyes also told DOJ lawyers that she had received death threats over the case.

“If that happens, and even if it doesn’t, the kind of emails I’m getting, the kind of voicemails I’m getting, that this is where we are… that a federal judge is getting death threats on a golf course. I really don’t think that’s what the founders envisioned,” she said.