The Department of Justice is urging the National Trust for Historic Preservation to drop its lawsuit against the White House ballroom, arguing it’s more necessary now than ever that the project continues unhindered by legal obstacles after the attack on the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
One gunman charged a security checkpoint and shot a Secret Service agent in the lobby of the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, just outside of the main room where President Donald Trump, his Cabinet members, their families, and thousands of journalists were gathered for the annual dinner. The shooting has led to Trump and his administration emphasizing the ballroom’s necessity for national security reasons, as it will include a military bunker.
Now, the DOJ is requesting that the National Trust abandon its suit against the project entirely, saying the legal action “puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at great risk.”
“I hope yesterday’s narrow miss will help you finally realize the folly of a lawsuit that literally serves no purpose except to stop President Trump no matter the cost,” Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote in a letter to Greg Craig, who is representing the National Trust. “Enough is enough. Your client should voluntarily dismiss this frivolous lawsuit today in light of last night’s assassination attempt on President Trump.”
Shumate gave the National Trust until 9 a.m. Monday to drop it, or face a move from the DOJ to “dissolve the injunction and dismiss the case.”
The letter was reposted by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who blasted the lawsuit as a “passing aesthetic gripe.”
“This lawsuit is on behalf of a single person who walks in the vicinity of the White House once a month and expects to dislike the East Wing’s new design,” he posted on X. “The passing aesthetic gripe of a single person cannot possibly justify delaying the construction of a secure facility for the President to do his job.”
The request comes as top U.S. officials, including Blanche, believe the suspected shooter, identified as Cole Thomas Allen, was targeting Trump and his Cabinet members at the dinner.
That claim is backed up by an alleged manifesto of Allen’s, in which he wrote that “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel)” are “targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.” He also included an apparent reference to Trump, writing that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes” in the manifesto.
The attack has fueled the DOJ’s longstanding claim in the legal saga that the ballroom is necessary for national security.
In its Sunday letter, Schumate wrote that the ballroom will ensure “President Trump and his successors will no longer need to venture beyond the safety of the White House perimeter to attend large gatherings at the Washington Hilton ballroom,” which he said is “demonstrably unsafe.”
CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER SHOOTER MANIFESTO RIPS TRUMP AS ‘PEDOPHILE, RAPIST, AND TRAITOR’
The ballroom case has seen back-and-forth injunctions and appeals, with District Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee, blocking the project and the DOJ appealing and frequently succeeding.
Leon had most recently solely permitted below-ground construction and any infrastructure around the bunker, a ruling that was eventually blocked by a D.C. appeals court that allowed all construction to resume until at least early June.
