Judge warns DOJ punishment will come in 'a zepto-second' if Trump golf records vanish

A federal judge investigating possible misconduct in President Donald Trump’s golf course case warned the Justice Department of consequences “in less than a zepto-second” if records were destroyed.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued the warning Friday as she opened a hearing on a bid by preservationists and golfers to stop the planned Sunday closure of East Potomac Golf Course and the surrounding park.

Reyes is already investigating whether government lawyers and officials misled her, and she has moved to appoint former U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu as a special master, a court-appointed investigator, to examine their conduct.

At the hearing, Reyes first asked whether anyone needed to correct a false statement and raised reports of document destruction tied to construction projects in Washington.

Then she asked whether anyone in the courtroom knew what a zeptosecond was. It is a trillionth of a billionth of a second.

“In less than a zepto-second,” Reyes told the government, there would be “serious consequences” if it had engaged in any document destruction related to the case.

If she finds credible evidence that records were destroyed, Reyes added, she will open proceedings on sanctions or contempt, penalties a judge can impose for misconduct or for defying the court.

The warning came three days after Reyes ordered the Justice Department, the Interior Department and the National Park Service to preserve records dating to Aug. 1, 2025, including communications on Interior Deputy Chief of Staff Gregory Wischer’s personal cellphone.

That same day, CNN reported that whistleblowers had told House Democrats key paperwork on Trump’s construction projects around Washington had already been destroyed. An Interior spokesperson told the network the department “follows all federal records management obligations.”

Because the judge’s directive took effect immediately and folded in every earlier hold on the records, destroying any of them now would violate a court order, the kind of defiance that contempt punishes.

Her order also reaches information tied to every declaration the government has filed in the case, including one from Kevin Griess, superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks.

“The planned tree management and cultural landscape rehabilitation project … is not a part of any potential project to redesign or renovate the Golf Course,” Griess said in an Oct. 16 declaration, days after crews cut down hundreds of trees on the course.

“These revelations are impossible to square with the Government’s prior representations,” Reyes wrote Nov. 9, after Interior asked a federal planning commission on Oct. 30 to approve “a championship course concept by Fazio Design,” the firm of golf course architect Tom Fazio.

Griess’ declaration and the government’s other sworn filings are now both records it must keep and the kind of statements Reyes is weighing as she decides whether she was misled.

“This timing evidences bad faith,” she wrote in the same opinion of the tree removal, which followed months of assurances from government lawyers that no redesign was underway.

The Justice Department has disputed that finding and fought Reyes’ effort to examine the government’s conduct.

“Defendants disagree with any determination of bad faith here,” the department wrote in a Nov. 12 filing.

When Reyes ordered the department to make public the names of three Interior employees who worked on the planning proposal, Wischer among them, it complied but called the order “an unconstitutional infringement on the Executive Branch’s right to conduct its own affairs.”

“There is no reasonable basis for conducting an ethics inquiry in this case,” the department argued Friday as it refused to consent to Liu or any special master.

The government must tell Reyes by 6 p.m. Monday the name and title of everyone who has received her records order, a list of the people who could face sanctions or contempt if records are destroyed.