Judge ‘furious’ as 430 trees are chopped down from golf course Trump wants to renovate

By Tierney Sneed, Michael Williams, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge on Monday said she was “furious” with the Trump administration’s move over the weekend to cut down at least 430 trees from a Washington, DC, public golf course that President Donald Trump is seeking to renovate.

US District Judge Ana Reyes, who is overseeing a legal challenge to Trump’s plans to overhaul the East Potomac Golf Course, put a tentative hold on any further tree removal through Tuesday afternoon after an emergency hearing Monday.

“I actually don’t think courts should be playing ‘Parks and Rec,” Reyes said, but she believed that, without any order from the court, the administration would move forward with chopping down hundreds of more trees.

“So now we are all going to have a massive fire drill because the government can’t be trusted,” she said.

Reyes began the hearing by telling Justice Department attorneys they had lost “credibility” with her because they gave less than a day’s notice before cutting down the trees.

“More than just being upset and furious right now, I am just beyond disappointed with the government,” Reyes said. When a DOJ attorney said they had done their “best” to give her and the plaintiffs a heads-up, the judge said, her voice raised, “No, you did your absolute worst.”

“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” Reyes also said.

She demanded that two National Park Service officials appear at the virtual hearing, which lasted more than three hours, to testify about how the plans to remove the trees came to be. The project came out of an October 5 meeting, one of the officials testified, during which the official was told to carry out a seven-year-old proposal seeking to restore the course’s “cultural” heritage.

Reyes said the officials failed to provide any reason for why hundreds of trees needed to be removed so suddenly and will require that a top Trump appointee at the Interior Department testify Tuesday. After a Justice Department questioned the relevance of the testimony, the judge said it appeared the court had been misled about the administration’s plans for the course.

“The question goes to whether or not I have been lied to, whether I have been lied to in declarations about the plans, whether I have been lied to about the timing of things,” Reyes, who was appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, said.

The park is one of several renovation projects Trump is working on in Washington, DC. The administration’s desire to turn the public course into a professional course — a renovation that could cost between $20 million and $49 million — has been wrapped up in litigation and angered those who fear it may take away a public and affordable place to play golf in the nation’s capital.

The Interior Department first gave notice of the tree removal plans on Friday evening in a filing describing the tree-chopping as part of a long-standing maintenance plan that was not connected to “renovation or redesign of the Golf Course.” Crews were at the park by Saturday morning chopping down the trees.

Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks, testified Monday that his office came up with the plan last week that identified the specific trees that were to be cut down. His office had planned to remove another 100-plus trees from other areas of the park.

He said the removal plan was moving forward now because resources and NPS workforce that had been surged for the America 250 events over the summer had recently become available. He said the only awareness he had of Trump’s own plan to redo the golf course was from social media.

Griess’ office was carrying out a directive from a top National Park Service official, who had told them last week to carry out a 2019 plan known as the Cultural Landscapes Report. The report proposed making East Potomac and other golf courses look more in line with how they looked when they first opened.

That official, Frank Lands, the NPS deputy director of operations, said he was given the instruction to implement 2019 recommendations at an October 5 meeting with Greg Wischer, a political appointee, who is the Interior Department’s deputy chief of staff. Lands said he was told to execute the plan as soon as “practicable,” while doing so in a way that was safe, didn’t disrupt golf play and that completed the appropriate environmental reviews. Neither official could answer the judge’s questions about how much the tree removal project will ultimately cost taxpayers.

Lands said that before last week, he had been involved in some discussions the 2019 cultural recommendations and that some of those discussions also touched how those recommendations would fit with Trump’s plans for remaking the golf course, but Lands wasn’t “privy” to those details. Lands revealed that two or three months ago, he met with premiere golf course architect Tom Fazio and showed him the course, but the official testified he had not spoken to Fazio or the White House about Trump’s proposed renovation since then.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Reyes noted that some of the same agency officials who were involved in carrying out the recent tree removal had submitted court declarations asserting that there were no concrete plans to implement Trump’s proposed overhaul for the golf course.

Reyes accused the administration of “double speak” and said it was “preposterous” for the officials to think that they didn’t have to include the tree removal plans in their court declarations. She will also issue an order requiring the administration to give 72 hours notice of any plans for the golf course, tree removal or otherwise, while the case plays out.

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