A federal judge appeared less than credulous on Thursday that the Trump administration has the authority to build his massive new ballroom on the footprint of the demolished East Wing.
According to CBS News, “U.S. District Judge Richard Leon heard arguments Thursday on a motion brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation to block the ongoing construction of the East Wing until the Trump administration goes through the appropriate approval processes, which it alleges the Trump administration has ignored.”
During the hearing, Leon said “there’s been an end-run around this oversight from Congress” in the process, and barked “Come on, be serious!” when the Justice Department lawyer argued that the project was legally equivalent to when former President Gerald Ford built a swimming pool at the White House in 1975.
Trump has promised that the ballroom, which will be around twice the size of the central White House building, is to be financed exclusively through private donations, without any taxpayer money. However, the price tag continues to go up and up over time, and experts are fearful that the massive corporate donations for the project could lead to conflicts of interest and favor-trading.
Leon raised this point as well, per the report, as he “repeatedly called the financing arrangement a ‘Rube Goldberg,’ referring to the cartoonist and inventor who made complex contraptions to perform simple tasks.”
The ballroom project is one of many that the president has proposed or enacted to try to leave his mark on Washington, D.C., in his second term. Another controversial change, approved by a board of Trump’s hand-picked allies, was to add Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which has prompted a lawsuit.
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