Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge they feared sanctions because it would be “nearly impossible” to force the administration to comply with a court order halting tree clearing at a Washington golf course President Donald Trump wants to renovate.
The claim came Thursday in a motion asking U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes to pause her Oct. 26 injunction while the administration appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It asks her to rule by Nov. 4.
Reyes’s order bars the Interior Department and the National Park Service from cutting any more trees in East Potomac Park, where Trump has vowed to rebuild a public golf course, according to her ruling.
“The unbounded nature of this command makes compliance nearly impossible, at the risk of sanctions for any such failure,” government lawyers wrote of a provision requiring them to tell the court “without delay” if anyone seeks to change the park.
“Staying the Order and permitting Defendants to conduct additional tree removal, maintenance, and other construction activities throughout the Park along with any associated temporary closures free from intrusive judicial oversight does not substantially impact [the plaintiffs’] concern,” the lawyers argued.
The motion argues that the people suing would lose almost nothing if the work resumed, while the government would suffer harm that cannot be undone if the order stays in place.
The lawyers wrote that letting the work go forward carries “minimal (if any) harms” for the preservationists and golfers who sued, saying they “have suffered no concrete injury.” Yet the government, the motion said, “will also be irreparably injured absent the stay.” Later in the same paragraph, it says the government is “likely to suffer irreparable harm.”
The motion lists injuries including “severe and overly intrusive judicial interference,” new recordkeeping requirements, and “the unique time constraints on senior executive officials.”
Park Service crews felled nearly 430 trees on Oct. 10, and Reyes wrote in her ruling that the agency “cannot un-chop a single tree, much less hundreds of them.” The government’s listed injuries are notices, records, and officials’ time, while the trees cut in October cannot be put back.
“The Court concludes that the Government has made no plausible showing of injury to balance against Plaintiffs’ irreparable harm,” Reyes wrote.
The “disparate Presidential statements” the motion faults Reyes for using include the Nov. 15 closure that the Interior Department now says it is working to carry out.
The motion says Reyes “cobbled together agency action from disparate Presidential statements and agency activities.” A day earlier, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward told her in a filing that he “acknowledges the President has twice directed Interior and the National Park Service to close the park by November 15.”
The motion also says the order “would require a declaration from a senior National Park Service employee before a single tree that posed an imminent threat to public safety could be cut down.”
But the order says the government “may take action to address an imminent threat to public safety,” with notice to the court “within 24 hours.” Under the order’s wording, the sworn statement follows an emergency cut rather than coming before it.
“Associate Attorney General Woodward remains ORDERED to appear at the hearing in person,” Reyes wrote in an order ahead of a Friday hearing at which the government must give the dates and times Trump “twice directed” the closure.
She is also weighing whether to order the government, “including relevant DOJ attorneys and staff,” to preserve information on the timing of the tree removal and what the court was told about it, according to her Oct. 26 order.