BREAKING: Judge Orders Inquiry of Whether Trump Administration Misled the Court in Golf Course Case

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A federal judge has ordered a former inquiry into the Trump Administration to determine if officials misled the court in regard to President Donald Trump’s East Potomac Park project.

At a contentious Friday hearing, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes pushed a lawyer from the Justice Department about Trump’s Oct. 18 Truth Social post mentioning the plan for a new course at the park, which currently boasts a municipal golf facility, and his statement that the facility would close Nov. 15.

Government lawyers told the judge during a seven-hour hearing a day after the Truth Social post that there was no plan to close the East Potomac course, according to The Washington Post’s report on the form inquiry order.

“The third-highest-ranking official at the Department of Justice is telling me, telling a federal court, that he cannot say that when the president posted the course will close on Nov. 15, what he meant was the course would close on Nov. 15,” Reyes said, according to the outlet.

The judge, a Biden appointee, lambasted Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. during the hearing, the news organization reported:

The judge opened the hearing by reading from D.C. Bar Rule of Professional Conduct 3.3, which bars lawyers from knowingly making false statements to a court or failing to correct prior false statements. She accused Woodward of playing “games” with language after he sought to distinguish Trump’s public statements from the government’s position in court.

“We played games on Oct. 19,” Reyes told Woodward, referencing a previous contentious hearing in her courtroom. “We’re not doing it today.”

The spicy hearing had plenty of heat as Reyes repeatedly slammed Woodward and at one point, looked up the definition of the word “involved” in the dictionary after a different government lawyer refused to answer one of her questions.

It was also revealed that this week, the government intended to submit a rendering of the new facility to the National Capital Planning Commission for review and that planning for the move had long been underway — something no one mentioned during the Oct. 19 hearing, an infuriated Reyes noted.

“Are you telling the court that there has been, in the works, a submission to send these plans to the National Capital Planning Commission for weeks, and no one — no one — mentioned that on Oct. 19 in a seven-hour hearing?” Reyes asked.

Woodward told the judge he did not remember being asked about such a submission, prompting an incredulous reply.

“Are you kidding me right now? Seriously, Mr. Woodward. Come on,” she said.

The contentious case began in February when the DC Preservation League and two local golfers sued the administration to stop its bid to remake the course.

Reyes blocked the administration on Monday from making any more changes to the course, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, after it bulldozed hundreds of trees on the property earlier this month.

Trump then zeroed in on the judge in a late night Truth Social post this week, claiming the course was dangerous and that the judge would be “fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course.”

The golf course work is just the latest Trump effort to remake Washington D.C. and sits alongside the demolition of the East Wing for a ballroom; the paving over of the Rose Garden; and the botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on his long list of projects.

This is a breaking story and has been updated.

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