Donald Trump’s Department of Justice says a recent shooting near the White House underscores the “critical need” for the president’s $400 million ballroom project as government lawyers demand a federal judge lift a court order blocking its construction.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche sprinted to federal court one day after a gunman opened fire near a security checkpoint and struck a bystander. The suspect, 21-year-old Nasire Best, was fatally shot by Secret Service officers.
Trump was inside the White House at the time and unharmed, but the proposed ballroom would provide a “SAFE HAVEN” from would-be attackers in the future, according to Sunday night’s Truth Social-inspired filing from the Justice Department.
The ballroom is “a knitted, unified, cohesive part of the East Wing Project, which is vital for National Security, and is being constructed to ensure that the President can perform his constitutional duties in a safe and heavily secured facility,” government lawyers wrote.
The four-page filing then complains about previously being forced by the court to reveal “top secret” details about the project — and then repeatedly lists them.
Those plans include “heavy steel, drone proof roof, missile resistant and drone proof columns, bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass, Military grade venting for air conditioning and heating, and much more,” including “bomb shelters, a state of the art hospital and medical facilities, Top Secret military installations, structures, and equipment, protective partitioning, and other features.”
The ballroom’s rooftop will be “hermetically sealed to prevent malign forces from contaminating the circulating air, thereby threatening the lives of those inside,” according to Sunday’s document.
“All of these and other specifications would have been kept secret, as is appropriate, but have been forced to be revealed to stave off the Court’s dangerous injunction,” lawyers wrote.
Without the ballroom, the White House will be forced to hold events in “vulnerable tents” outside the building that expose the president, foreign dignitaries and their families to “various threats,” including the “inordinately wet” lawn, lawyers wrote.
“Over the years, many an evening has been ruined by even moderate rain,” they said.
A lawsuit filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation has sought to stop the administration from “illegally constructing a massive ballroom” after demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House.
The Justice Department called the lawsuit a “great attack on our Country in that the Military, Secret Service, and Law Enforcement are not happy that all of these Top Secret features have been revealed to potential enemies, criminals, and all others, including the fact that there will be a major drone port and Government sniper facilities on the heavily secured roof of the Ballroom.”
“This is a terrible, tremendously harmful case to the United States of America, and all it stands for!” lawyers wrote.
A federal appeals court has allowed construction to continue, for now, while the legal battle plays out, but a lower-court injunction stalling construction has not prevented the government from continuing work on the underground bunker. The plaintiff has also never objected to that part of the project.
In March, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the president is the “steward” of the White House but “he is not, however, the owner!”
Any construction requires congressional authorization, regardless of whether the president plans to use private or public dollars to fund his plans, according to Leon.
The Justice Department says “many patriotic private donors” have “Hundreds of Millions of Dollars“ to support the project, but the administration has asked for $1 billion from taxpayers for White House security additions, including for the ballroom.
The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the proposal is too “complex and large in scale” to be included in broader funding legislation, and Republicans abruptly left Washington, D.C. last week at an impasse over the president’s plans while balking at the price tag for a newly launched $1.8 billion compensation fund for his political allies.
According to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, Secret Service officers returned fire after a gunman — identified as Nasine Best —started shooting towards a White House security checkpoint on Saturday evening.
Best was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
A bystander who was reportedly struck by gunfire was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. It’s unclear how the person was hit.
“A preliminary investigation indicates that as the individual approached, he removed a weapon from his bag and began firing at posted officers,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. “Secret Service police officers returned fire, striking the suspect, who was transported to an area hospital, where he later died.”
The suspect, identified as Best, had reportedly cut off contact with his friends and family and began claiming that he was Jesus Christ, according to The Washington Post, citing an affidavit for his arrest in a separate incident last year.
He had previously been arrested and charged with trespassing after allegedly using an exit turnstile to access a restricted portion of the White House grounds in July. He had claimed he was Jesus and was trying to get arrested.
Officers had previously encountered Best after he was found “walking around the White House complex inquiring how to gain access at various entry points.”
He also had been involuntarily committed last June for obstructing vehicle entry to the White House complex, according to the report.
