The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion seeking to disqualify the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s changes to the East Potomac Golf Links, demanding that she recuse herself from the case.
The motion in the escalating standoff followed a remarkable clash on Monday, when a group of preservationists and Washingtonians behind the lawsuit informed Judge Ana C. Reyes that the Trump administration had moved to abruptly clear hundreds of trees from the golf course. Judge Reyes had previously ordered the government in blunt terms not to carry out any surprise work on the municipal course, which President Trump has proposed transforming into a championship-level one.
The revelation that the government had appeared to surreptitiously clear cut large sections of the course over a holiday weekend while giving less than 24 hours of notice drew Judge Reyes’ fury. In a heated, four-hour hearing on Monday, she demanded to know who in the federal government had directed subordinates at the Interior Department to begin work on the course, going as far as to call two additional department officials to testify on the spot about what had happened.
When the court on Monday could not contact Gregory Wischer, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department, Judge Reyes ordered that both he and Jessica Bowron, the acting director of the National Park Service, appear at a hearing on Oct. 19 to testify.
In the filing Friday night, Stanley Woodward Jr., the associate attorney general, wrote that the judge’s “conduct in this case continues a pattern of animus against the Trump administration.” He wrote that the judge had “repeatedly belittled and shouted at” Marissa Piropato, a Justice Department lawyer, “in an unorthodox and regrettable show of judicial impropriety.”
Mr. Trump and top administration officials have repeatedly attacked and diminished federal judges who have ruled against the president. The Justice Department has also made a practice of immediately appealing adverse rulings in major cases, looking to higher courts for a reprieve.
The Friday filing appeared to attempt to flip the script on Judge Reyes, who had questioned on Monday why clearing the trees was so urgent that the government could not have provided the early notice she had sought throughout the case.
Instead, Mr. Woodward wrote that the demand that senior officials appear on Monday to speak about tree removal showed “systematic disregard for Trump administration officials’ demanding schedules,” and was needlessly urgent.
“Here, Judge Reyes has simply gone ahead and entered an order compelling the presence and testimony of a cabinet agency’s deputy chief of staff and the director of N.P.S.,” he wrote. “That order does not even attempt to demonstrate a compelling need, nor does it provide any explanation of why she is unable to obtain the information she deems relevant from witnesses that have already been made available.”
Judge Reyes ordered the group suing to file a response by Sunday afternoon. She did not indicate whether she would agree to recuse herself.
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